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The imperfect legitimacy of judicial umpires in European multilevel democracies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2023
Abstract
Judicial institutions have become the standard solution to umpire multilevel polities across much of the European continent. However, such arrangement is not free from complexities. This paper analyses the problems associated with the construction of legitimacy regarding constitutional courts in European multilevel democracies. In these polities, constitutional courts tend to rely on three different forms of legitimacy, which are embedded into their institutional design: democratic, multilevel; and technocratic. However, these forms of legitimacy are in tension, often undermining one another when combined. Furthermore, this tension is exploited by political actors to attack the courts, resulting in reputational costs for these institutions.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society of Legal Scholars
Footnotes
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Pablo Castillo-Ortiz is Former Visiting Fellow, iCourts, University of Copenhagen (Denmark). The author would like to thank Robert Greally, Paolo Sandro and Anastasia Shesterinina for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Thanks are also given to iCourts, at the University of Copenhagen, for hosting the author as a Visiting Fellow during an important the part of the period in which this paper was prepared. All mistakes and omissions are the sole responsibility of the author.
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