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5 - Litigation Strategies and the Political Framing of EU Law

Exploring the Archives of a Trade Union Lawyer in the Viking and Laval Cases

from Part I - Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

By
Julien Louis
Edited by
Mikael Rask Madsen ,
Fernanda Nicola  and
Antoine Vauchez
Mikael Rask Madsen
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Fernanda Nicola
Affiliation:
American University, Washington DC
Antoine Vauchez
Affiliation:
Université Paris 1-Sorbonne
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Summary

The chapter focuses on the judicial mobilisation of the trade unions before the European Court of Justice in the well-known Viking and Laval cases. It asks how to use the personal archives of the EU lawyers to better understand litigation strategies, by analysing the digital archives (emails and attachments) of a trade union lawyer from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) involved in the mobilisation. Firstly, the chapter discusses the analytical benefits and methodological problems raised by this rare kind of empirical material that brings new qualitative insights on the practices of the litigants behind the official scene. Especially, this material asks ethical and legal questions around confidentiality and privacy that should be addressed. Secondly, thanks to these digital archives, the author brought a new understanding of the issues at stake in the Viking and Laval cases, by focusing on two examples: the judicial lobbying of the Swedish trade unions in the Laval case, and the role of the trade union legal experts in framing the legal and political issues of the two affairs.

Keywords

Litigation strategiesEuropean Court of Justicejudicial lobbyingEuropean Trade Unions ConfederationSocial EuropeViking and Lavalmethodology
Type
Chapter
Information
Researching the European Court of Justice
Methodological Shifts and Law's Embeddedness
 , pp. 105 - 130
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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