The Judicialization of Politics as a Matter of EU Law? From the Protection of the Individual Towards the Management of Conflict

Courts addressing core public policy questions has been prominently termed as “the judicialization of politics”. This development implies that court decisions have an impact beyond individual disputes and exceed the confines of concrete cases. The desirability and legitimacy of the transformation of the judiciary’s role constitutes a permanent subject of academic debate. This presentation assesses the changing role of the judiciary in the light of the European integration process. Its aim is to concretize the socio-legal nature and implications of the so far only roughly identified transformation of the judiciary’s role in the EU’s multi-level legal order. In order to illustrate the changing role of the judiciary towards the management of complex forms of relief, the presentation will trace EU law’s influence on the recent court-ordered bans of diesel vehicles in German cities.