Robert Lecourt (19 September 1908 – 9 August 2004) was a French politician and lawyer, judge and the fourth President of the European Court of Justice. He was born in Pavilly and died in Boulogne-Billancourt.
Significantly, in his role as a judge at European Court of Justice, he gave the landmark decision in the case of Costa v ENEL, establishing the supremacy of EU law over the law of member states.[1]
After studying at the Jean-Baptiste-de-La-Salle college in Rouen, he studied law at the University of Rouen and became a lawyer in Rouen and at the Court of Appeal of Paris in 1932.
He was president of the Youth People's Democratic Party in 1936, and a lieutenant at the Fort de Saint-Cyr in 1939, whereafter he became actively involved in the French Resistance and a member of the steering committee of the Resistance movement.
In 1958, he was elected in the first constituency of the Hautes-Alpes. A member of two national constituent assemblies, he was elected from the MRP in the Seine district, and retained his mandate during the three legislatures of the Fourth Republic. He chaired the MRP group in the French National Assembly, and was also a member of the Association of MRP until his death.
He served as judge on the European Court of Justice from 1962 to 1976, and as President of the Court from 1967 to 1976. In the fourteen years he spent in Luxembourg as a European judge, Lecourt had a major impact on the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Communities.[2] In 1964, he was rapporteur in the famous Costa v. ENEL case, in which the Court of Justice ruled that European law had primacy over national law. Lecourt was convinced that this was a necessity for the Court of Justice, and that the European judges had an active role to play in the creation of an ‘ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’. They did have to convince national courts to collaborate.
Soon after his election as president of the court, Lecourt developed a communication strategy to convince national judges of the benefits of the preliminary ruling mechanism, a procedure through which they could ask the European judges questions regarding the interpretation of the European Treaties.[3]
After his retirement from the Court, Lecourt published "L'Europe des Juges" (Bruylant, 1976), an account of the major decisions and principles of European law, targeted at national lawyers and judges.[4]
