Legal Reasoning of the Court of Justice in the Context of the Principle of Equality Between Judicial Activism and Self-Restraint

Abstract

The first part of this article deals with the following issues: underlining what I consider the real meaning and extent of a judge's power, with particular emphasis on the specific role of the European Court of Justice, and identifying and evaluating law-making judicial operations.
In the second part, in the light of the framework and the criteria outlined in the first part, I focus my analysis on three paradigmatic cases in the context of the principle of equality in order to apply in practice the theoretical conclusions reached in the first chapter.

The third and concluding part tackles the problem of the present and future constitutional features of the European Judicature, examining if and to what extent the Court of Justice acts as a Constitutional Adjudicator.