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45 Liverpool L. Rev. 1 (2024)

handle is hein.journals/lvplr45 and id is 1 raw text is: Liverpool Law Review (2024) 45:1-23 https:Ildoi.org/l0.1007/s10991-023-09325-x How Does Case Law Shape Civil Law Systems? An Analysis of Spanish Administrative Courts Alfonso Egea-de Haro' Accepted: 6 March 2023 / Published online: 31 March 2023 ŠThe Author(s) 2023 Abstract The paper explores the use of case law by Spanish administrative courts. Based on a database of 2964 sentences, a content analysis captures the integration of case law into the legal basis of court rulings. Even though case law is not listed as a source of law in the Spanish legal system, courts follow case law from either the same sen- tencing court (self-referential pattern) or higher courts (hierarchical pattern). The results of a logistic regression analysis point to a higher level of regulatory complex- ity and the configuration of the appellate procedures as incentives to integrate higher courts' case law. Keywords Case law - Self-referential pattern - Administrative courts - Hierarchical pattern - Regulatory complexity Introduction The consolidation of a corpus of case law is linked to legal certainty in several ways. First, case law compensates legislators' inability to identify all possible factual sit- uations. Second, case law facilitates the identification of relevant regulations in a complex legal scenario fueled by institutional fragmentation, overlapping levels of government, and the multiplication of regulatory agencies. Third, a sound jurispru- dential doctrine may prevent litigation and provide efficiency in judicial proceedings since conflicting interests and the burden of proof are clearly settled. However, the positive effects of case law on the legal system are equally criti- cized on several grounds (Waldron 2012). The idea of judicial lawmaking is a chal- lenge to the integrity of the rule of law and the principle of division of powers. In addition, case law may limit the flexibility courts need to apply the law according to E Alfonso Egea-de Haro alfonso.egea@uam.es Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Law, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain I_) Springer