Bringing the Outside inside Macro and Micro Factors to Put the Dialogue among Highest Courts into its Right Context

Without downplaying the importance of the dialogue that takes place among the ordinary domestic courts and the ECJ, the authors deem the interaction among the highest courts to be even more significant for the nature of European constitutional democracies, since it also impinges upon the way that constitutional courts affect the constitutional setting of national democracies in the European Union. In fact, the dialogue among the highest courts can heavily impact upon the balance between the democratic and the constitutional principle. Although different courts show a different propensity to engage in such interaction, a point that will be considered again in the concluding remarks, the intention of this paper is to analyse the institutional and cultural conditions that can be considered as important conditions in influencing positively or negatively the development of extra-systemic (voluntary) references. This will lead the authors to present an overview of the appointment mechanisms and the professional profiles of justices in six European constitutional courts: France, Italy, and UK (old Member States); Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary (new Member States). Some conclusive remarks will then be offered to point to the institutional mechanisms that should be put in place in order to make constitutional courts accountable, given the different patterns of judicial appointment and the different professional profiles displayed by judges sitting in those courts.