European Court of Justice

The Court of Justice, often called the European Court of Justice, is the highest court of the European Union. Its mission, as its own site states, is to ensure that EU law is followed and applied in the same way across the EU. It is one of the two courts that together make up the institution called the Court of Justice of the European Union, alongside the General Court. At the time of the source the Court had 27 Judges, one from each Member State, assisted by 11 Advocates General, with Judges appointed for a renewable six-year period and the President elected by the Judges for three years. Cases are allocated to Chambers of three, five or fifteen Judges, the last being the Grand Chamber, and the Court can sit as a full court of 27 for exceptionally important cases. It mostly deals with questions about EU law referred by national courts and with cases brought by the Commission against Member States for infringing EU law, and it hears appeals against decisions of the General Court.