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?
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.
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”.
Methodological issues pervade contemporary debates in EU law. There are many reasons for this. Some are specific to the subject matter of EU law itself. The multiple crises that the European Union is experiencing lead EU law scholars to question their classical conception of EU law: a law of integration that should more or less naturally lead to a constitutional or federal order. These crises may also lead scholars to question their relationship with the European institutions, which have been central to the development of the core concepts of EU law and of EU law as a disciplinary field.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters