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Comment by lnauta | Hacker News Reader

AFAIK the EU law has to be implemented on a local level, and the countries' agencies can uphold in their respective country. Once a single country has a precedent, this can be used by other member states.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

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Nope. 1) Not all of the "EU law" behaves the same way. There are legal acts of the EU that are directly applicable (like most provisions in regulations), there are even some provisions of the primary legislation (treaties) that can be applied directly (i.e. are binding and can be litigated). Of course, there are also legal acts that need implementation (like most provisions of directives). 2) EU law is upheld both by the EU Court of Justice (Luxembourg) and national courts, this depends on the cause of action you have. 3) An "agency" has a special meaning in the EU, that doesn't mean the same thing as a federal agency in the US (as a branch of the executive). There are instead EU institutions and national public bodies (whose exact nomenclature depends on local law) that may also have the task of upholding legislation. 4) No precedents are necessary or used at the EU level. Precedents are more a common law thing, they have an explicit binding nature for courts there. While there are common law countries (Cyprus, Ireland, Malta) with precedents, their precedents have no special place or role in how EU law works, there is no stare decisis how it works in common law. So, this is a national decision based on German national enforcement reviewed by a German court.

Precedent might have no place in EU law but there are plenty of places where precedent does matter in statute law even if the precedent is advisory rather than binding. There is quite definitely a doctrine of precedent in Norway, see for instance [1].

[1] https://www.scandinavianlaw.se/pdf/39-14.pdf

Norway is not a member of the EU. Yes, precedent can be used with different meanings, and many clueless ministries of justices in continental law countries tried to innovate by calling some measures they made as turning that country into partly based on precedents (usually to restrict the freedom of judges, like in Hungary - which clearly failed). But more importantly, there is a world of difference between precedents 1) having in practice some relevant legal effect in a jurisdiction (e.g. using them as arguments or just as interesting case law) or 2) in the sense that lower courts are bound by some decisions of upper courts in a country, and 3) having a worldwide legal system built around stare decisis that is actually working the same way for hundreds of year, and where decisions from, say London, are read by lawyers in NZ or Singapore because they may have as much legal force as an act of a parliament. It's not just a spectrum, it's a very different beast for practical purposes.

Norway is nonetheless part of the EU legislative system.

But my use of Norway was simply because it is familiar to me and shows that precedent is important in at least some statute law countries.

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