Constitutional Courts in Civil-Law Western Europe: Quantitative Approaches

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the state of the art concerning empirical studies about constitutional courts in civil-law Western Europe. There is a solid, even if not very extensive or exhaustive, empirical literature on civil-law Western European constitutional courts. Still, a broad overview of the empirical literature seems to confirm that it is mostly driven by concerns about local dynamics in specific Western European countries and less so about any more general comparative assessment. There is a very limited number of quantitative studies using data from multiple countries and looking for possible common and causal patterns.

Keywords: civil-law, civil law, Western Europe, constitutional courts, empirical studies, empirical study, constitutional court, causal pattern, causal patterns, judicial behavior

JEL Classification: K4, K41