The European Court of Justice was created in 1952 under the Treaty of Paris to hear cases for the Coal and Steel Community. Since then the court has transformed itself from an international court to a constitutional court, holding European Community law to be supreme and often directly effective in member countries. The court has recently begun to develop a human rights jurisprudence as well. More than half the cases on all topics come before the court as requests from national courts for preliminary rulings regarding the application of European Community law in domestic cases. The court differs from the United States Supreme Court in that it must hear all cases referred to it, however unimportant. It has 15 judges, one for each member country, as well as 9 advocates general, modeled on the French practice. Each court member has three staff members who are analogous to United States law clerks. The court's working language is French. In the near future the court will probably consider the function of oral argument, whether it needs a system of leave to appeal or certiorari, whether it should permit dissents and concurrences, how it uses law clerks, and other matters. The court faces some of the most pressing current public policy questions and is also central to questions of European legal, economic, social, and political integration. List of 16 further readings