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The Public Law Center and the Center for Constitutional Politics have had the pleasure to host Prof. Nuno Garoupa from George Mason University (Fairfax, USA) for a webinar talk regarding the 2021 book edited by Garoupa and two co-editors titled “High Courts in Global Perspective”.
Today’s European discourse, on the level of legal and political battles is dominated by harsh criticism of national high, constitutional and supreme courts pushing for changes that accommodate European expectations. In this broader context, the hosts of the webinar, Márton Sulyok (Public Law Center) and Kálmán Pócza (Center for Constitutional Politics) have asked Prof. Garoupa about his thoughts on the judicialization of politics and judicial governance, the different methodologies in law and economics and social sciences with which one can analyze the working of high courts, and whether we can trust these methods and the data they produce. The panelists then talked about the importance and measurability of judicial independence, as one of the buzzwords informing the many indexes on the rule of law and the efficiency of justice systems that exist. It has been said by Prof. Garoupa that a multitude of these indexes is a welcome sight but they should not dominantly inform European policy choices and expectations towards the Member States due to lacking a necessary foundation in the contextual determinants of the national system assessed. Regarding judicial reforms pushed for by hard data in this context, choices between a dualistic and monolithic structure have also been addressed.
