Explanations for the successful expansion and consolidation of the European Union and its legal system have long emphasized the importance of domestic courts’ sending preliminary references to the Court of Justice. Key to many of these theoretical accounts is the claim that domestic courts are better equipped than the Court of Justice to compel national governments to comply with EU law. Integrating insights from the comparative judicial politics literature into the context of the EU's preliminary references system, we provide a theoretical and empirical foundation for this claim by arguing that incorporating domestic courts into the EU legal process enhances public support for expansive judicial interpretations of EU law. We go on to argue, however, that this transfer of legitimacy depends on citizens’ views of the national and European courts. We support our argument with evidence from a preregistered survey experiment fielded in Germany.

长期以来，对欧盟及其法律体系成功扩张和巩固的解释一直强调国内法院向欧洲法院发送初步参考意见的重要性。许多这些理论解释的关键是声称国内法院比欧洲法院更有能力迫使各国政府遵守欧盟法律。将比较司法政治文献的见解融入欧盟初步参考体系的背景中，我们认为将国内法院纳入欧盟法律程序可以增强公众对欧盟法律的广泛司法解释的支持，从而为这一主张提供了理论和实证基础。然而，我们继续认为，这种合法性的转移取决于公民对国家和欧洲法院的看法。我们用在德国进行的一项预先注册的调查实验的证据来支持我们的论点。