Interpretacja prawa wspólnotowego - metody i moc wiążąca wykładni ETS
An interpretation of community law - methods and binding force of ecj legal reasoning

Summary/Abstract: This study is aimed at analysing a way of an interpretation of European law, precisely the methods of interpretation employed by the European Court of Justice and binding force of its legal reasoning embodied in preliminary rullings. In the first part of this work, I have tried to indicate a new attitude and more comprehensive view on process of ECJ’s legal reasoning. In my opinion, we should consider this process as a kind of matrix of particular elements, a specific puzzle of commonly known methods and techniques of legal interpretation with a paradigm of European integrity and principles of “uniformity” and “effect utile” as determining factors. It is important to notice that in the ECJ judgements justificatory arguments do not appear in isolation. They mutually support each other, and the final law-interpreting decision is justified not by this or that particular argument or reason to be found in the judgement on the base of this or that particular method or technique of interpretation, but rather by the cumulative weight of all the arguments brought together in the Court’s opinion as a coherent, mutually supporting structure. This is why I postulate for comprehensive “holistic” approach to all above mentioned elements in the “matrix of considerations” by reference to which the legal meaning of the provision in question is to be identified. Having presented that idea, I turned to describing each of these elements - major methods of interpretation: literal (with reasons of its inadequacy), contextual, teleological, comparative and a historical one and interpretation of national law in conformity with European Community legal order and some implications arising from principles of uniform and effective interpretation. The second part of this study deals with the institution of preliminary rullings with special emphasis lied on its binding force. In this section we try to find the answer to a question of who and when is bound by the preliminary rulling issued in a particular case, consequently to the question about the “power” of interpretation of Community law provisions presented in ECJ jurisdiction under Article 234 of the Treaty. Examining if and to what extent we face precedents in E.C. law, we tackle the problem when the provision is “clear” enough to lift the obligation of making a reference for preliminary rulling to ECJ due to the “clear meaning” of the provision, whether according to “clara non sunt interpretanda” rule (“acte clair”) or because its meaning has already been explained in previous ECJ case law (“acte éclaire”). To sum up, presented issues are crucial not only for understanding the preliminary rullings as a result of legal reasoning performed by ECJ judges. Moreover, they have an important practical value as every national judge in case of having a “European” issue he has to decide on, faces necessity to “interpret” norms of European Community legal order and he must do this in the “European way”, the way his Luxembourg’s counterparts do.

• Details
• Contents