Referrals

This chapter discusses and provides a thorough review of scholarship on judicial referrals. The scholarship on referrals has grown tremendously in the twenty-first century, with most of that scholarly work focusing on the Court of Justice of the European Union and its preliminary reference procedure. Within this growing area of study there are several major areas of research: (i) why national courts and judges file references; (ii) why and how private litigants seek out CJEU referrals; and (iii) how the CJEU uses and participates in the preliminary reference system. The chapter also examines the scholarship focusing on other international courts, as well as the less-developed literature examining how ordinary and/or lower courts within national legal systems use referral processes. After a brief overview of referrals, the chapter begins by examining the major questions posed in the CJEU preliminary reference literature, the most developed literature and research on referrals. It concludes with some thoughts on the scholarship on referrals in other major international courts and national court systems.