23 March 2024
A Critical Assessment of How We ‘Speak’ EU Law
Although EU law touches on several profound and complex ontologies of ways of living and being in the European polity, these meanings are usually not reflected in how lawyers and legal scholars ‘speak’ EU law. The reason for this is that EU law is formulated in a strikingly abstract and univocal way, leaving little room for an in-depth consideration of the different interpretations of the law by reference to the various values and conceptions of the individual and social institutions that it underlies. Continue reading >>
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23 March 2024
The Janus-Faced Culture of EU Law
Can there be a cultural study of EU law? The notion of legal culture is notoriously tricky. It is both omnipresent and yet seemingly ungraspable. Can we nevertheless hope to dispel the mystery of legal culture, and seize this notion as an object of study? And can it provide a method to improve our understanding of EU law? Continue reading >>
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22 March 2024
Studying Migrations and Borders from a Pluridisciplinary Perspective
I chose for years to consider migrations and borders from a pluridisciplinary perspective. Such a pluridisciplinary approach reveals to be demanding: it needs both to be developed with discipline, and to be opened to wanderings. You have to accept to be confronted with personal controversies, to be faced with internal discourse on the method. Continue reading >>
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22 March 2024
Europe’s Judicial Narratives
Through the representations of Europe that it conjures up and conveys, the European Court of Justice significantly influences the EU’s self-perceived identity. In that sense, it contributes to the shaping of a European polity, i.e. a European political community united by shared representations about its history and identity. Continue reading >>
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21 March 2024
Colonialism and EU Law
In 1957, when the Treaty of Rome was signed and founded what later became the European Union (EU), four out of six of the original Member States were colonial powers. An important methodological question for EU law research is how this historical fact has affected the development of EU law. I argue that answering the question of how Europe’s centuries long history of colonialism has shaped EU law is not just a historical exercise but also a starting point for an examination of EU law of today. Continue reading >>21 March 2024
For a Postcolonial reading of the EU
The use of the terms 'decolonial', 'postcolonial' and 'race' has become fashionable, particularly in Anglo-American legal scholarship. However few legal scholars in recent years have ventured into postcolonial approaches to European Union law. I will argue that one cannot understand the history and law of the European Union if one fails to understand and acknowledge colonialism. Continue reading >>
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20 March 2024
EU Law Through the State Lens
The conceptual apparatus that frames our knowledge of EU administrative law today has its origins in the legal scholarship that established a new field in the turn of the 1980s and during the 1990s. This scholarly field owes much of its uncontested existence to a series of major handbooks, which systematized materials that hitherto had been sparse and scattered, first in German, then in English and later still in French. Revisiting the past may provide some clues as to the role legal scholars can and should have in a period in which we may be witnessing an epochal transition in Europe. Continue reading >>
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19 March 2024
EU Law and Legal Theory
European law is a very strange creature. It is something that has been created, produced, mostly by jurisprudence and doctrine, and this makes European law especially challenging and interesting for scholars, because it has been, in many respects, a product of scholars. How should we approach the study of European law? How could we approach in a sensible way the study of European law? Continue reading >>
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19 March 2024
Reconnecting EU Legal Studies to European Societies
EU legal studies suffer from a disconnect with social reality. If we need a method, it is one that allows us to reconnect with European societies as a bustle of unsettled forms of life, from both an existential and social perspective. Departing from classic institutional and constitutional approaches to EU law, while endorsing the critical turn in the EU legal studies, I will argue in favour of a new “anti-transcendental” perspective. Continue reading >>
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18 March 2024
Becoming a (Critical) EU Law Scholar Today
Turning the existential crisis of Europe into critical knowledge, called for by Loïc Azoulai, requires – among other things – critical scholars. The question is, however, whether the present conditions allow for such people to emerge. I discuss only four of the many obstacles that critical scholarship faces today and conclude with a call for something that might be called “critical scholarship about legal scholarship”. Continue reading >>
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