Before July 2009, salaries of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were paid by their home country, and there were substantial salary differences between MEPs representing different countries. Starting in July 2009, salaries are pegged to 38.5% of a European Court judge’s salary, paid by the European Union. This created an exogenous change in salaries, the magnitude and direction of wh...

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is a very powerful court compared to other international courts and even national courts of last resort. Observers almost unanimously agree that it is the preliminary references procedure that made the ECJ the powerful court it is today. In this paper, we analyze the determinants that lead national courts to use the procedure. We add to previous studies by co...

During a speech in Brussels in May, 197o, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Schuman Plan, the President of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, Robert Lecourt, declared that the country which becomes a member of the Community "marries its law." With Britain's membership impending, the question obviously needs to be posed, what kind of a marriage will it be? The purpose...

The international media recently reported the case of Eluana Englaro, a 38-yearold woman in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) who died in February 2009 following withdrawal of her feeding tube. At the time of her death, she had been unconscious for 17 years. For many years, her father had been seeking permission to allow her to die. His request was rejected by the courts several times on diffe...

Introduction While there has been considerable scrutiny by both domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of issues of contested medical treatment, little judicial attention has addressed the exercise of public health powers. Indeed, the role of law in public health has been much neglected at both judicial and academic level. This is on one level surprising, given the vulner...