To Trust and to Be Trusted: Exploring Levels and Drivers of Trust in and Between Courts in the European Multilevel Judicial System

Recently, a research agenda emerged on trust between courts in Europe, predominantly in the context of the preliminary ruling procedure or the Protocol 16 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). However, little is known about how trust differs across the levels of judicial hierarchy in a complex multilevel judicial system such as Europe. Building on the insights from trust literature and based on empirical evidence from surveys and interviews conducted with Slovenian and Croatian judges, this article explores
the divergences and drivers of trust in and between courts in Europe. More specifically, it explores reciprocal trust between first-instance, second-instance, Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judges in Slovenia and Croatia, as well as one-way trust of national judges in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The result show that courts are the most trusted among the political institutions and that the CJEU, the ECtHR and national Supreme Courts enjoy the highest levels of trust. Age, training in European law, knowledge of foreign languages and trust in national versus European institutions were found to be the most important drives
of judicial trust in the CJEU and the ECtHR, while trust in national Supreme Courts and Constitutional Courts is driven by trust in national political institutions, age and type of court. The article also explores the concept of reciprocal trust and concludes that trust levels between the two courts in a reciprocal trust relationship are similar, which may suggest that trusting an actor in a reciprocal trust relationship may result in being trusted back.