European Judges Interpreting Delegated Sovereignty

Abstract

The internal courts of the member states of the European Community are Community courts what concerns application of Community law and the internal courts have to apply Community law uniformly. In order to apply Community law uniformly, the internal courts co-operate with the Court of Justice through the preliminary rulings proceedings. There are also other less direct forms of co-operation between internal courts and the Court of Justice. Generally, one could recognize such co-operation forms as parallel, co-ordinative, subordinative and multi-level co-operation, which indicate that also internal courts have influenced and will influence the Court of Justice in its decision-making. Such co-operation is influenced by the peculiarities of internal court systems. For example, in Estonia the judges are accustomed that the lower courts are not formally bound by the decisions of the higher level courts and have been used to be more independent in their decisions from the influence of the precedent than the judges of the Court of Justice