Pringle and the Nature of Legal Reasoning
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X1402100111 |
| Date | 01 March 2014 |
| Published date | 01 March 2014 |
| Author | Paul Craig |
| Subject Matter | Article Review |
21 MJ 1 (2014) 205
ARTICLE REVIEW
PRINGLE AND THE NATURE
OF LEGAL REASONING
P C *
§1. INTRODUCTION
In a recent issue of this journal Gunnar Beck1 responded to my earlier article2 on
the CJEU’s judgment in Pringle3 concerning the legality of the European Stability
Mechanism.
He is v er y c ri ti ca l o f t he CJ EU, ca st ig at in g it fo r re as on in g t ha t i s s ai d to be ab su rd , a nd
accusing it of crossing the l ine between legal reasoning and politic al judgment.4 Gunnar
Beck acknowledges that cour ts regularly deploy an admixture of tex tual and purposive
argumentation when reaching their conclusions, but nonetheless regards Pringle as an
illegitimate judgment in which the CJEU used whatever type of justi catory argument
that it could in order to uphold the ESM, doing grave injust ice to the text in the process.
e di culties with Beck’s analysis of the judgment will be considered below. Su ce it
to say for the present that they reside, paradoxic ally, in Beck paying insu cient regard to
the background purpos e of the Treaty provisions that were in issue in Pringle.
He is also critical of much academic analysis of the case,5 including my own. Beck’s
article gives the impression that I ‘appear’ to favour some open-ended fusion of text
and teleology, the e ect of which is that whenever text fails to get you where you want
to go, one can have recourse to some open-ended purposive argument. He contends
* Professor of Engl ish Law, St John’s College and the Universit y of Oxford.
1 ‘ e Legal Reasoning of t he Court of Justice and the Euro Cr isis – the Flexibility of t he Cumulative
Approach and the Pringle Case ’, 20 MJ 4 (2013), p.635.
2 P. Craig, ‘Pringle: Legal Reasoni ng, Text, Purpose and Teleolog y’, 20 MJ 1 (2013).
3 Case C-370/12 Pringle v. Government of Ire land, Ireland and the Attorney General, Judgment of
27November 2012, not yet report ed.
4 e same k ind o f crit ique ap pear s in t he Epil ogue t o G. Be ck, e Legal Reason ing of the Court of Just ice
of the EU (Hart, 2013).
5 P. Koutrakos, ‘Political c hoices and Europe’s judges’, 38European Law Review 3 (2013), p.291–292; B. de
Witte and T. Beukers , ‘ e Court of Justice approves the c reation of the Europea n Stability Mec hanism:
Pringle’, 50 Common Market Law Review (2013), p.805–848; A. Hinarejos, ‘ e Court of Justice of
the EU and the lega lity of the Europe an Stability Me chanism’, 72 Cambridge Law Journal 2 (2013),
p.237–240.
Article Review
206 21 MJ 1 (2014)
that I ‘suggest’ that the Pringle judgement fuses ‘literal and purposive considerations
in a way that is both logica l and universalizable’,6 such that it can be a genera l model of
legal reasoning. I said nothing of the kind. What I actually said was that it is common
for textual argumentation as to the scope of a particular Treaty article to be shaped by
background teleological assumptions or objectives. ese may be apparent on the face
of the judgment. ey may be implicit in the Court’s reasoning. I also made clear that
the text will perforce shape and constrain the role played by recourse to background
purpose . e degree of work done by teleological argumentation will depend in part on
how far the Court believes that it can go toward its desired conclusion through purely
textual a nalysis, and how far it is will ing to give voice to the telos underlying a part icular
scheme of Treaty provisions. us, if one wished to save the ESM, greater recourse to
teleological input might be requ ired, and I sketched, withi n the limits of allowable space,
the nature of such argu ments. It is of course contestable how far such reasoning can be
taken, an issue t hat will be considered in more detail below.
is academic exchange raises interesting issues concerning the nature of legal
reasoning, which will be explored in this article. It will begin with some introductory
remarks concerning the Maastricht settlement for economic and moneta ry union. is
will be followed by discussion of the relationship between text and teleology in legal
reasoning. e focus wil l then turn to Pringle, and the way in which a properly in formed
understanding of the nature of that relationship can shed light on the Court’s legal
reasoning and Beck ’s critique thereof.
§2. THE MAASTRICHT SETTLEMENT
e Maastricht Treaty was notable for introduction of the Pi llar system and for detailed
rules on economic and monetary union (EMU). e latter were complex and di cult
to comprehend for the uninitiated. e ‘architecture’ of the EMU provisions was
nonetheless readily apparent for those who had the i nclination and patience to read the
relevant provisions. e EMU s chema was predicated on a dichotomy between monetary
and economic union, and this remained largely unchanged in the Lisbon Treaty. It is
indeed arguable that t he dichotomy was reinforced by the Lisbon Treaty. e Maastricht
bargain was re ected in t he primary Treaty ar ticles and in the Stabil ity and Growth Pact,7
which eshed out the details of the schema and contains the multilateral surveillance
procedure and the excessive de cit procedure.
6 G. Beck, 20 MJ 4 (2013), p.638.
7 Council Reg ulation (EC) 1466/97 of 7July 1997 on the s trengthening of the s urveillance of budge tary
positions and the surveilla nce and coordinat ion of economic policies, [1997] OJ L209/1; Council
Regulation (EC) 1467/97 of 7July 1997 on speeding up and clarifying the implementation of the
excessive de c it procedure, [1997] OJ L209/6.
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