THE European Court of Justice (ECJ), a stately place populated by robed judges, eager clerks and artworks depicting clunky legal metaphors, seems an unlikely place for a coup. But it is here, “tucked away in the fairyland Duchy of Luxembourg”, wrote Eric Stein, an American academic, that the court “fashioned a constitutional framework for a federal-type structure in Europe”. This line has resonated with the many critics that the court, the supreme judicial authority in the European Union, has attracted. British Eurosceptics in particular have seen in the ECJ a political project shrouded in legal obscurantism that poses a deep threat to the ancient sovereignty of their courts and MPs.
Now that Britain has voted to leave the EU, liberation from the shackles of Luxembourg ranks second only to control of immigration in the Brexiteers’ hierarchy of needs. That explains why Theresa May, the prime minister who will shape the terms of Britain’s departure, has vowed to take the country out of the ECJ’s jurisdiction. “We will not have truly left the European Union,” she said recently, “if we are not in control of our own laws.”
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