The introduction sets out the book’s approach to the great judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) between 1961 and 1979. Each of the Court’s landmark cases will be analyzed in comparative context, in particular by contrast to the enforcement and escape mechanisms commonly employed in international trade treaties including the postwar General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and today’s World Trade Organization (WTO). The book will also discuss the explanations for these judgments put forward by some of the most influential lawyers then working at the Court, above all French ECJ judge and later President of the Court Robert Lecourt. The introduction sets out the argument that the greatest innovations of the European legal order, including the new role for private individuals and national courts provided for by the doctrines of direct effect and supremacy, were directly linked to addressing the practical problem of how to effectively enforce trade treaty obligations while prohibiting unilateral safeguards and inter-state retaliation.

This chapter discusses the Court’s 1970 judgment, Internationale Handelsgesellschaft, where the Court declared that the Court of Justice itself would take on the role of reviewing whether European legal obligations were in conflict with the fundamental rights of individuals. This judgment is often understood as derived from the sensitive relationship between the Court of Justice and national constitutional courts that wished to protect the fundamental rights set out in their national constitutions. This chapter demonstrates, however, that in Germany and Italy the national constitutional courts had already developed an accommodating approach to potential conflicts between treaty obligations and national constitutional law fundamental rights, and therefore that the possibility of clashes between European law and national constitutional law fundamental rights in the early years of European legal integration was less of a practical challenge than is often understood.

This chapter discusses the Court’s 1964 judgment, Costa v. ENEL, where the Court declared the supremacy of European law, thus requiring national courts to resolve conflicts between European law and national law in favour of the domestic application of European law. The supremacy of European law is often understood as the partner of the direct-effect doctrine and the result of the Court’s ‘functionalist’ approach to the development of the European legal order. This chapter demonstrates that the supremacy doctrine of European law was also motivated by the Treaty of Rome’s prohibition on the unilateral adoption of safeguard measures by the member states, as shown both by the text of the Court’s judgment and by the writings of judge Lecourt.

This chapter discusses the Court’s 1964 judgment, Dairy Products, where the Court declared that self-help mechanisms of reciprocity and retaliation, so important in many trade treaty systems, were comprehensively prohibited within the European legal order. This judgment is often rightly understood as marking an essential difference between European law and general international law. This chapter demonstrates that the principle announced in Dairy Products was also directly connected to the direct effect and supremacy doctrines of European law, again as shown by national court enforcement of treaty obligations in other treaty systems, and by the writings of judge Lecourt.

This chapter builds on the detailed discussions of particular ECJ judgments earlier in the book to put forward a new way of understanding the founding of the European legal order. It includes both the doctrines establishing rights for individual litigants before national courts and the doctrines specifying new and demanding relationships between the European states, and demonstrates how each is related to the other. It concludes with a discussion of judge Robert Lecourt’s role in the early decades of the European Court of Justice.

This chapter discusses the Court’s 1974 judgment, Van Duyn, where the Court declared that provisions of Directives could enjoy direct effect in the national legal order. This judgment is often recognized as the landmark judgment on the ‘direct effect of Directives’, and remains a controversial decision. This chapter demonstrates that the direct effect of Directives was a logical consequence of the Court’s use of direct effect as a substitute for inter-state retaliation, and shows that this understanding of the direct effect of Directives can be found in the early writings of judge Lecourt.

This chapter discusses the Court’s 1963 judgment, Van Gend en Loos, where the Court declared that European law could be relied upon by private individuals before their national courts. The direct effect of European law is often understood as empowering private individuals and national courts, as supplementing the European Commission-initiated compliance procedure set out in Article 169 of the Treaty of Rome, and increasing the binding nature of European law. This chapter demonstrates that the direct effect of European law was also directly connected to the Court’s rejection of the possibility of inter-state retaliation within the European Economic Community. This is demonstrated both by advocacy of direct effect for other trade-related treaty systems, where reformers often wish to suppress retaliatory enforcement mechanisms, and by the writings of judge Lecourt, which demonstrate that this important aspect of direct effect was well recognized by one of the Court’s then most influential judges.