National Higher Courts and European Integration: A Survey of Six Decades of Academic Inquiry

Abstract

Boosted by landmark decisions such as Crotty, Solange, or Maastricht-Urteil, academic literature on National Higher Courts in the context of European integration has undergone an exponential growth in the last decades. In this Article, I aim at mapping this emerging subfield in order to explore the three patterns that structure it. First, a trend towards the consolidation and expansion of literature on the higher courts of the Member States, which has gained relative autonomy from general studies on European law and politics. Second, a clear tendency towards the internationalization of this subfield, which has developed in parallel to the national scholarship on the topic. And third, the emergence of a pattern of transdisciplinary dialogue in a subfield featured by the diversity of approaches, methodologies, and epistemological backgrounds.