Between Neutrality and Judgment

• Department of Law

PhD thesis defence by Alexandra Nouvel.

This thesis examines how judicial authority is produced within the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It begins from a structural tension within the Court’s adjudicative architecture: while decisions are formally presented as the collective and impersonal voice of the institution, the drafting and preparation of judgments are entrusted to individual judges, most notably the Judge-Rapporteur. Drawing on legal realist and institutional theory, the study develops a framework for analyzing how individual roles operate within a system designed to present decisions as collective and neutral. The analysis proceeds in three stages. First, it situates the CJEU’s reporting function within a comparative institutional context and reconstructs the Court’s internal case-processing practices through documentary sources and interviews with judges and référendaires. Second, it conducts a comparative case-law analysis across distinct doctrinal fields (citizenship, Turkish workers’ rights, non-discrimination, and family reunification) supplemented by quantitative findings from the IUROPA database concerning reporting patterns and longitudinal doctrinal imprint. This combined analysis identifies recurring forms of rapporteurial influence in drafting architecture, issue framing, and doctrinal stabilization, the scope of which varies across legal regimes depending on legislative density and political salience.The closing chapter reflects on the implications of these findings for prevailing understandings of neutrality and authority. It argues that the CJEU’s institutional design does not eliminate individual influence but redistributes and absorbs it into a collective voice, thereby transforming interpretive discretion into institutional authority through structured impersonality. The thesis thus contributes to debates on judicial agency, collegial adjudication, and the nature of neutrality in supranational courts.

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