On 4 December 1952, the first members of the Court of Justice took up their duties with the mission of ensuring that "the law is observed", especially "in the interpretation and application" of the Treaties. Based in Luxembourg, the CJEU started as a single court in 1952 called the Court of Justice of the European Coal and Steel Communities. In 1958, it was renamed the Court of Justice of the European Communities (CJEC). The Court of First Instance (which was renamed General Court as from December 2009) was created in 1988, followed by the creation of the Civil Service Tribunal in 2004. In 2009, with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) acquired its current name and composition, consisting of two courts: the Court of Justice and the General Court. From 1 September 2016, the Civil Service Tribunal ceased to operate after its jurisdiction was transferred to the General Court. Since its creation in 1952, the CJEU has delivered 42,129 judgments and orders. Today, it has 265 members. A peculiarity of the CJEU is its multilingualism, since each of the official EU languages can be the language of the case and its judgments are translated into the other EU languages.

The 70th anniversary was also at the centre of the special Meeting of Judges that was held from 4-6 December 2022 at the CJEU, bringing together the members of the Court of Justice and of the General Court of the European Union, the presidents of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts of all the Member States, and the presidents of the European Court of Human Rights and of the Court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).