Transplanting the European Court of Justice to the Andes

This chapter explains why national political leaders decided to add a court to their integration project. After considering a variety of options, governments chose to model the Andean Tribunal on the European Union's Court of Justice (ECJ). But they did not slavishly copy the ECJ's design features and legal doctrines. Instead, they selectively adapted those that were appropriate to the more sovereignty-protective Andean context, preserving greater state control over the ATJ and its role in interpreting regional legislation. Thus, this chapter explains why these original adaptations later came to be seen as undermining the effectiveness of the Andean legal system and why, in a 1996 revised treaty, member states revised the institution to bring the ATJ jurisdiction and access rules closer to those of its European predecessor.