3 ms·

"The closing of the office is an unimportant detail of this particular case." Says who? All precedent is to be interpreted narrowly in scope wrt to the facts,

by roel_v 11y ago

"The closing of the office is an unimportant detail of this particular case." Says who? All precedent is to be interpreted narrowly in scope wrt to the facts, and that's not even taking into account that judge-made law as a concept is, in general, foreign to most EU jurisdictions (with the UK being the most notable exception). While there is not much dispute over the primacy of the ECJ over national law (although de jure this is not even a given!), there is no reason to assume that broad, general doctrines laid out by the ECJ all of a sudden constitute new law in the members of the Treaty (I mean, I'm not even talking about the ECJ-equivalent of a 'van Gend en Loos' ruling, I'm just talking about de factor interpretation by member state judiciaries and administrations). Furthermore I'm a bit perplexed at how easily you seem to dismiss the closing of the office, which is absolutely material to this case. It's quite different when a unilateral decision of a party affects the counter party, or if both parties knew what they got into from the start! Also, or maybe 'especially', in employment cases. Please tell what you base your assertion on, because it's in direct contradiction with all literature and practice. (and yes, I do have a law degree, although it's been a few years since I last studied any EU law, so I'm not claiming to be an expert here).

BlackFly 11y ago
Where is your law degree from? The vast majority of EU coutries follow civil law (as opposed to common law) and courts are supposed to interpret law, not interpret precedents. Basically the only holdout to this is the UK, which leads to civil law sometimes being referred to as Continental law. That being said, the closing of the office was definitely the important fact in this case, but this doesn't narrow the scope of the law. The law says that companies cannot require work weeks of more than 48 hours. Excluding commutes can lead to preposterous results, so there are a variety of circumstances where commute time must be considered as part of the work. This case just happened to be about one such set of circumstances. Where to draw the line is determined by the individual judges.
- roel_v 11y ago
  "The vast majority of EU coutries follow civil law (as opposed to common law) and courts are supposed to interpret law, not interpret precedents. Basically the only holdout to this is the UK, which leads to civil law sometimes being referred to as Continental law." Right, which is what I said.

by roel_v 11y ago

BlackFly 11y ago

Where is your law degree from? The vast majority of EU coutries follow civil law (as opposed to common law) and courts are supposed to interpret law, not interpret precedents. Basically the only holdout to this is the UK, which leads to civil law sometimes being referred to as Continental law. That being said, the closing of the office was definitely the important fact in this case, but this doesn't narrow the scope of the law. The law says that companies cannot require work weeks of more than 48 hours. Excluding commutes can lead to preposterous results, so there are a variety of circumstances where commute time must be considered as part of the work. This case just happened to be about one such set of circumstances. Where to draw the line is determined by the individual judges.

roel_v 11y ago
"The vast majority of EU coutries follow civil law (as opposed to common law) and courts are supposed to interpret law, not interpret precedents. Basically the only holdout to this is the UK, which leads to civil law sometimes being referred to as Continental law." Right, which is what I said.