Citation
Adam, C., et al. (2020). Litigant success: How litigant configurations relate to legal outcomes. In Thinking the EU to Court (pp. 155–187). Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-21629-0_7
Research Question
How do different litigant configurations, single parties, coalitions, public actors, private actors, and mixed groups shape the likelihood of legal success before the Court of Justice of the European Union?
Key Takeaways
Litigant success systematically varies by configuration: simple, one-sided disputes have the highest win rates;
Complex disputes with many actors on both sides generate lower success rates because legal uncertainty widens judicial discretion.
State actors and institutions win most consistently, while private litigants succeed far less often.
Coalitions and multi-party alignments increase the diversity of legal arguments, raising unpredictability but not necessarily improving outcomes.
Legal success and political success can diverge sharply; losing in court may still advance a litigant’s strategic or policy goals.
Patterns in Figures 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 show that litigant structure is a measurable predictor of outcomes, with meaningful implications for litigation strategy.
Dataset Description
The chapter synthesizes case-level data from all CJEU annulment actions across several decades.
Key components include:
• Aggregate annual success rates (visualized in Fig. 7.1 on p. 168);
• Win/loss rates by litigant configuration: private vs EU, mixed coalitions vs EU, and MS vs EU (Fig. 7.2 on p. 169);
• Comparison of simple vs complex configurations using ANOVA tests (Fig. 7.3 on p. 172);
• Detailed case studies (pp. 165–179) illustrating how litigant coalitions influence legal reasoning and judicial uncertainty.
This is a multi-decade observational dataset, analyzing hundreds of CJEU decisions, supplemented by qualitative interviews with litigators and officials.
Methodology
Comparative; quantitative/statistical; doctrinal; mixed methods (case studies plus statistical tests).
Key Findings
The chapter demonstrates that the configuration of litigants, who are aligned with whom, how many parties are present, and whether actors are public or private, strongly predicts legal outcomes. Simple configurations yield the highest success rates (as shown in Fig. 7.3), whereas complex, multi-actor disputes lower success rates because they increase legal uncertainty and widen judicial discretion. The data in Fig. 7.2 show that when EU institutions face multiple state actors or diverse coalitions, outcomes become more volatile, but not necessarily more favorable to challengers. Importantly, litigant success cannot be understood without the strategic and political objectives that drive the litigation. Legal and policy victories often diverge, especially in multi-level governance contexts such as the EU.
Summary
This chapter offers a rich and nuanced explanation of how litigant structure shapes judicial outcomes. Rather than treating court decisions as the product of doctrine alone, the authors show that outcomes frequently turn on the configuration of actors involved in the dispute. At its core, the chapter argues that litigant structure is not incidental: it is an integral determinant of both legal success and judicial behavior.
The statistical visualizations reinforce this point. Figure 7.1 (p. 168) charts overall success rates in annulment litigation by year, showing wide variation early in the integration period and long-term stabilization. Figure 7.2 (p. 169) compares success rates by litigant configuration. Cases with simple private-versus-EU alignments show markedly lower success for private actors, while configurations involving member states or mixed coalitions display distinct success patterns, some higher, some lower, depending on whether the EU is defending or being attacked. Figure 7.3 (p. 172) shows a striking difference between simple and complex configurations: simple configurations have significantly higher success rates, as confirmed by ANOVA.
These findings bear directly on litigation strategy. When many actors intervene, the number of legal perspectives expands, increasing the interpretive space available to the court. This makes outcomes harder to predict, undermines reliance on formal doctrine, and raises the importance of narrative coherence. The qualitative case studies on pages 165–179 illustrate how coalitions craft competing narratives, how interveners align or splinter, and how variation in legal arguments shapes judicial reasoning. The Court’s willingness to diverge from expected doctrinal outcomes rises when configurations are complex, and arguments multiply.
For litigators, the chapter’s insights are as practical as they are theoretical. Success is correlated not simply with the strength of legal claims, but with the strategic context: the stakes for each actor, the resources available, the political dimensions of the dispute, and the number of perspectives the judges must entertain. The authors underscore that legal success and policy success do not always coincide. Losing a case may advance a litigant’s political objectives or signal institutional constraints the litigant seeks to highlight. These dynamics are especially salient in high-stakes regulatory and competition cases where governments, industries, and EU institutions collide.
Most importantly, the chapter confirms that judicial outcomes are patterned and predictable when viewed through the lens of litigant configurations. The structure of the conflict, not just the merits, shapes outcomes. This has far-reaching implications for how counsel assess risk, prepare narratives, plan forum strategy, and counsel clients on the likely trajectory of complex, multi-party litigation.
How the Study Advances Empirical Understanding of Legal Outcomes
How the Study Advances Empirical Understanding of Legal Outcomes
The study finds that legal outcomes before the Court of Justice of the European Union follow structured and repeatable patterns linked to litigant configurations, with systematically different success rates for simple versus complex alignments and for public versus private actors. The analysis shows that recognizing this structure matters for understanding legal outcomes because institutional decision environments and procedural complexity expand or constrain judicial discretion in observable ways that cannot be explained by doctrine alone. By integrating longitudinal case-level data, statistical comparisons, and close doctrinal analysis, the study reflects an empirical, context-sensitive approach to legal outcomes that aligns with Pre Dicta’s emphasis on grounded, case-based evaluation of decision environments as a necessary component of sophisticated litigation practice.
