This research attempts to fill the gap in the literature regarding voting behavior in the Justice and Home Affairs configuration of the Council of the European Union. The results from fixed effect...Show moreThis research attempts to fill the gap in the literature regarding voting behavior in the Justice and Home Affairs configuration of the Council of the European Union. The results from fixed effect logistic regressions of various models are that the state of the national budget was the most important factor in explaining voting behavior in this configuration. While there are a multitude of research limitations that limit the generability of these results, it does provide a solid starting point for further research.Show less
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been accused of being a judicially activist court in cases such as Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL. This behaviour has been studied extensively by...Show moreThe European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been accused of being a judicially activist court in cases such as Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL. This behaviour has been studied extensively by scholars. In recent years, the ECJ has made decisions in the area of Justice and Home Affairs. This thesis looks at the question: to what extent the court has acted in a judicially activist manner in this area through the analysis of three cases: Opinion 2/13, Melloni and Metock. A further aim of this thesis is to determine if certain methods have been used by the court to make its judicially activist behaviour acceptable to member states.Show less