The UK joined the European Union in 1973 and UK legislation established that EU law had to be given effect in the UK. Over the last 40 years it is generally accepted that the UK’s membership of the EU has produced a considerable impact on the legal systems within the UK. The central EU judicial body, the Court of Justice, emphasised in a series of legal rulings that EU law could produce rights and obligations between individuals that national courts were required to enforce in any legal dispute raised before them. Combined with the expanding substantive scope of EU law to cover vast areas of personal and business relationships between parties based in the EU, there is evidence that EU law has had a significant impact in the way that national courts across the EU have had to exercise their judicial roles. EU law has had to be accommodated by all legal systems in ways that has inevitably impacted on many aspects of personal and business life. However, there has never been a comprehensive study in Scotland considering the impact of EU law on Scots law and decision-making by the judiciary in the Scottish legal system.

The research will look at the application of European Union (‘EU’) law before the Scottish courts for the first time since the UK joined the European Union in 1973. As a result of our membership and the subsequent development of important legal doctrines, such as the direct effect doctrine, by the European Court of Justice (‘CJEU’) European law produces rights and obligations which must be given effect by national courts in any legal disputes. European Union law consists primarily of the EU Treaties, together with Regulations and Directives. Over the last 40 years the European Union has been given competence and adopted legal rules in broader areas of substantive law which have changed the legal landscape of rights and obligations across increasingly greater areas of personal, social, business and economic life. Accordingly EU law is part of the Scottish legal system and the Scottish courts are required to apply EU rules, either directly (Treaty or Regulation) or indirectly (where provisions of a Directive have been implemented by primary or secondary legislation) to an increasingly broad range of legal disputes.

This research project was triggered by the consideration of EU law in the recent Scotch Whisky Association minimum alcohol pricing case, where the dispute was referred by the Inner House of the Court of Session in Scotland to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling during 2014. The European Court can provide interpretative rulings to all courts of the EU on aspects of EU law, and a starting point, and specific focus of the research project would be to review the (anticipated) limited number of cases in which the Scottish courts have made a reference for a preliminary ruling by the European Court. However, this case and the inter-relationship between EU law and the Scottish courts at its core, leads to a wider inquiry about the role (the hypothesis will be that it has increased in recent years) played by EU law in disputes before the Scottish courts.

A general theme is how has Scots law developed to accommodate EU law; the hypothesis is that there will have been an increasing number of legal judgments by Scottish courts in more recent years applying EU law demonstrating the increasing substantive reach of EU law and enhanced awareness of EU rights. Accordingly the hypothesis is that EU law will have pervaded many elements of private and public law disputes in the Scottish courts. Subsidiary questions will be to assess how the picture of EU law before the Scottish courts maps to:- distinct processes in the Europeanisation agenda; to distinct phases/landmark rulings by the Court of Justice/ distinct phases in legal education relating to EU law in the Scottish University Law Schools.

This pilot study will seek to provide a comprehensive database of all judgments by Scottish courts in which EU law has been considered and applied since the UK’s EU membership and will lead to further work by the PI and other academics on the qualitative impact of EU law on the Scottish legal system.