The Framework for Judicial Cooperation in the European Union: Unpacking the Ethical, Legal and Institutional Dimensions of ‘Judicial Culture’

Possibilities and constraints for achieving legal unity in the context of the European Union (EU) manifest themselves in multiple and illustrative ways in the development of cooperation between judges in EU Member States. For example, recent discussions on judicial independence in Hungary and Poland underline that we are still quite far removed from the realisation of a shared European normative basis for judicial functioning, that is: a shared ‘judicial culture’. These discussions simultaneously emphasise the importance of such a basis for the realisation of the ideal of the ‘rule of law’. As a stepping stone for future interdisciplinary legal research, this article provides a theoretical analysis of the concept of ‘judicial culture’ and three of its core dimensions (ethical, legal, institutional), which has not been available in legal scholarship so far. Our analysis demonstrates that by carefully establishing in which types of sources we can locate the respective dimensions, and by designing a methodology for analysing these sources, scholars can analyse judicial cultures in a more in-depth and systematic manner. In this way, specific conceptual ‘lenses’ become available for the collection of relevant information and empirical data, for the theoretical analysis and comparison of these results and eventually for a normative assessment of the possibility and desirability of convergence of judicial cultures. From this perspective, this analysis aims to contribute to further insight into questions on legal unity and its realisation in a context of diverging social pressures.