The Gazette 1975

313 / 336

Department ministering to its needs in the matter of
finance, accommodation, equipment, staff or ancillary
services. The Court is a self-administering institution,
within the limits of a budget approved by the Euro-
pean Parlirment and the Council of Ministers.
Secondly, there is the linguistic problem. Because the
Court has to cope with up to seven languages it must
have a fairly large staff of translators, with, of course,
attendant clerical staff. The translation department
alone employs over 80 people; though it is fair to say
that at the moment while the Irish language section is
non existant, the English and Danish sections are tem-
porarily rather larger than they would normally be be-
cause are busy not only with the current work of
the Court but also with the Translation into Danish
and English of the back volumes of the Official Reports
of the Court's decisions. The Irish Government have
resolved not to have copies of any documents available
in Irish other than the Treaties and documents con-
cerning the accession of 1973. This was formally stated
by the government at paragraph 30, page 83, of the
White Paper of January 1972, published prior to The
Accession of Ireland to the European Communities.
Coming back to the judicial side of things, I do not
suppose t' at there is much need to explain to you what
a Judge i.;. But I have no doubt an Irish Solicitor
will ask what an Advocate-General is. This is hardly
surprising, since he is a Judicial figure quite unknown
to the Irish judicial system. Mark you, in this we are
not unique. He is equally unknown in some of the other
Member States, and it seems that, even in those States
that have Advocates-General in their systems, the status
and role of these are, in most of their Courts, different
from those of an Advocate-General at the Communities
Court.
T h e Advocate-General
I will start by stating what an Advocate-General is
not.
First and foremost, despite the label he wears, he is
not an Advocate for anybody.
Secondly, it is inaccurate to liken his function to that
of a Judge-Advocate at a Court Martial or of an amicus
curiae.
In a way the nearest analogy in our system to the
relationship between the Advocate-General and the
Judge of the European Court is the relationship be-
tween a High Court Judge and the Supreme Court.
1 he Advocate-General is the member of the Court who
has the first go at saying how he thinks a case ought
to be decided. His opinion looks and reads for all the
world like an Irish High Court Judge's reserved judg-
ment, except that it culminates in an expression of
view as to how the case should be decided instead of in
an order. After it has been delivered, the Judges gather
together and decide whether that view is right or wrong
or partly right and partly wrong.
There are four main differences between an Advo-
cate-General and an Irish Judge of the High Court.
T he first is that the Advocate-General hears a case at
the same time as the Judges, instead of hearing it alone
first. 1 he second is that his opinion is never decisive-
it is as though, in Ireland, every case automatically
went to the Supreme Court. The third is that his
opinion can never be commented on by the parties
And the fourth is that he delivers it standing up instead
of sitting down.
After that, you may well ask: why have Advocates-
General? Why cannot the Judges just get on with the
business of judging, as soon as the lawyers have ex-
pressed thc: r views upon the ease without having to
wait for this odd functionary to express his views on
the case ?
When I asked that question I received a variety of
answers—some historical— for instance the rather ob-
vious one that, of the six States who were parties to
the founding Treaties, most had Advocates-General, by
one name or another, in their highest Courts, so that
it would have seemed odd to them not to have Advo-
cates-General at this Court. I have also heard practical
answers of one sort and another, some of them quite
pertinent.
But the real answer, I think, though it may be an ex
post facto rationalisation, is that this is a Court at the
same time of first instance and of last instance. There is
no appeal from it. Yet it has to make some decisions of
far-reaching importance. So it is right that its procedure
should provide for a two stage process of decision. The
Advocate-General's is the first stage. It is akin
therefore to having two hearings rolled up in one
avoiding the necessity of having an appeal to another
Court.
The same thought is at the root of the fact that our
Supreme Court never likes to decide a point that has
not been dealt with by the Courts below.
Let us now consider the jurisdiction of the Court.
This is, on paper, immensely varied, as you have ob-
served from reading the Treaties and some subsequent
Conventions. In practice it covers three main cate-
gories of cases :
(i) References for preliminary rulings
(ii) Direct actions, and
(iii) Staff cases.
Staff cases are far less important than the other two
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