About HHCN
Highest judiciaries nowadays have to operate in a highly fluidizing legal landscape. Over the years numerous judges have grown more accustomed to becoming conversant with extra-systemic sources of law, either because of social exigencies emanating from internationalisation presenting them with new legal problems or of their own accord.
The vast amount of legal provisions of non-national make seeping through into national legal orders is a well-documented phenomenon. For instance, in the European context the supremacy of community law and the European Convention of Human Rights are as the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of national laws and rendered legal decisions. Yet a related tendency can be distinguished in which the sheer frequency and easiness judges voluntarily consult extra-systemic legal sources is on the rise.
As this process takes its further course areas of law that have long been regarded paradigm cases of national adjudication bit-by-bit lose their national feathers. Cursory empirical has shown that judges around the globe more frequently invoke eachother's legal solutions to solve locally originated legal problems. The actual invokement of foreign case law in the national legal realm, however, has been met with mixed reactions and because of the topical nature of the subject many questions and problems remain. It is against this backdrop that the Hague Highest Court Network has been established.
Andrea Lollini (Bologna University) and Ton Hol (Utrecht University) are the coordinators of the Hague Highest Courts Network. They share their views on the changing role of national highest courts in a globalising world during the 2011 Law of the Future Conference in The Hague