Spotlight

European courts—traditionally compartmentalized and deferential to legislative decisions—are going through a rapid and major transition in the 21st century. In his new book, Judicial Transformations: The Rights Revolution in the Courts of Europe (published by Oxford University Press in September 2009), Mitchel Lasser explores these changes.

“In the last twenty years, European legal systems have been reinventing themselves as systems that are extremely sensitive to fundamental rights,” says Lasser, who is the Jack G. Clarke Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. “These rights, which are quite similar to those protected by the United States Bill of Rights, are now being ever more actively protected by the European national and supranational judiciaries. The courts are even competing with each other to provide the definitive definition of fundamental rights.”

In the book, Lasser investigates the intellectual, structural, and social reasons for the phenomenon. He notes that “the depth, breadth, and speed of the transformations have been incredible.” The book centers its attention on the French system; but it also examines other national judiciaries and their interactions with the European transnational court systems.