The fourth chapter deals with the ECJ’s present role in the EU’s political system and how its procedural and organisational law might need to be adapted to better reflect it. The chapter first explains how in recent years, notably through the Treaty of Lisbon, the ECJ’s mandate has been modified. It argues that the Court is no longer only concerned with ensuring the autonomy and effectiveness of EU law, but that it is also a democratic organ of the EU polity, whose decisions need to be responsive to EU citizens. To ensure democratic responsiveness, the chapter argues, the ECJ’s procedural and organisational law needs to be further developed. The chapter makes concrete proposals by applying the Treaty on European Union’s democratic principles to the ECJ’s procedural and organisational law. It discusses, among other things, the role of the European Parliament in selecting ECJ members the place of NGOs and civil society in ECJ proceedings, the interaction between the Advocate General and the judges, the composition of the ECJ’s chambers and the mechanism for case assignment and make suggestions how to better reflect the concern for the ECJ’s democratic responsiveness.

In this chapter the authors discuss their empirical research strategies through which innovative questions relating to the impact of language and multilingualism on the production of jurisprudence by the ECJ can be examined. Focusing specifically on the significance of language for Advocates General (AGs) at the ECJ, the authors examine how semi-structured interviews and corpus linguistics analysis can shine a light on processes within the ECJ that are otherwise invisible: semi-structured interviews are uniquely suited to uncovering otherwise invisible factors that impact the institutional culture of the ECJ; and corpus linguistics analysis can help to investigate whether those invisible factors can in fact be ‘seen’ in the output of that institution – its jurisprudence. The chapter demonstrates step by step how this unique research design can help to develop original objects of inquiry that speak to broader research questions relating to the impact of language on EU law more generally. By focusing specifically on the ‘added value’ of this type of empirical research to the body of work on the ECJ, the authors show how such methods can be used in an interdisciplinary way to gain a nuanced and rich understanding of the many layers that come together to produce EU jurisprudence.