This chapter defines the monograph's scope of inquiry – to elucidate the origins of Judiciary branch institutions in the newly democratizing countries of Central and Eastern Europe – and sets out its research puzzles: how came the institutional design of the Judiciary to be patterned on always the same transnational template which happens to maximize judicial empowerment to the exclusion of alternatives? And why was it accepted so uniformly across the whole region, despite its obvious drawbacks for the self-interest of the national parliaments called on to ratify it? The thesis of the book is then outlined. Judicial empowerment is explained as the empowerment, in fact, of a new social class, a transnational community networked around elite legal professionals. A literature review critiques some of the most pertinent works in the fields of law, political science, international law, and socio-legal studies, showing the connections between their findings and the instant thesis. The complex methodological approach used herein is finally outlined, consisting of multi-modal research strategies, sources of data, and forms of reasoning: case study and process tracing, Grounded Theory, comparative historical analysis, and logic triangulation.
