An Econometric Analysis of the Influence of the Advocate General on the Court of Justice of the European Union
Carlos Arrebola
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Ana Júlia Maurício
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Héctor Jiménez Portilla
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This article contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of the Advocate General in the makeup of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The article measures the influence of the Advocate General on the judgments of the Court of Justice through an econometric study using a probit model with data from annulment procedures of the last twenty years (1994–2014). Despite the acknowledged limitations in establishing the influence of the Advocate General on the case law of the Court of Justice via a quantitative analysis, the regression models used in this article give a statistically significant measure of such influence, improving previous attempts in the literature. The findings suggest that the Court of Justice is approximately 67 per cent more likely to annul an act (or part of it) if the Advocate General advises the Court to annul than if it advises the Court to dismiss the case or declare it inadmissible. These results raise several questions as regards judicial independence and the relevance of the figure of the Advocate General, providing a grounded basis for future discussions and judicial reform.

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Contributor Notes

PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge.

PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge.

Development Economist and Overseas Development Institute Fellow at the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia.

The authors would like to thank Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston, Dr Albertina Albors-Llorens and Professor Kenneth Armstrong for the elucidating discussions on this topic. The authors would also like to thank Professor Eleanor Spaventa for the thoughtful comments on a previous version of this article, as well as Professor Robert Schütze, the participants at the Durham-Cambridge Doctoral Workshop in EU Law—‘Igniting European Union Law: Frameworks for the Future’ for the helpful discussion, and the anonymous peer reviewers of the CJICL. All errors remain ours. The database and STATA file with the econometric analysis used in this study can be accessed via email request to Héctor Jiménez Portilla: <hectorjp@ymail.com>.

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