This article analyzes how the judicial politics sparked by the European Union's (EU) legal development have evolved over time. Existing studies have traced how lower national courts began cooperating with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to apply EU law because this empowered them to challenge government policies and the decisions of their domestic judicial superiors. We argue that the institutional dynamics identified by this ‘judicial empowerment thesis’ proved self‐eroding over time, incentivizing domestic high courts to reassert control over national judicial hierarchies and to influence the development EU law in ways that were also encouraged by the ECJ. We support our argument by combining an analysis of a dataset of cases referred to the ECJ with comparative case study and interview evidence. We conclude that while these evolving judicial politics signal the institutional maturation of the EU legal order, they also risk weakening the decentralized enforcement of European law

中文翻译：

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欧洲一体化的不断演变的司法政治：重新审视欧洲法院和国家法院

本文分析了由欧盟（EU）法律发展引发的司法政治如何随着时间的推移而演变。现有研究追踪了下级国家法院如何开始与欧洲法院 (ECJ) 合作以适用欧盟法律，因为这使他们有权挑战政府政策和国内司法上级的决定。我们认为，这一“司法赋权论点”所确定的制度动态证明会随着时间的推移自我侵蚀，激励国内高等法院重新控制国家司法等级，并以欧洲法院也鼓励的方式影响欧盟法律的发展。我们通过将提交给欧洲法院的案例数据集的分析与比较案例研究和访谈证据相结合来支持我们的论点。