EUFutures

About

The future of EU legal integration is at a significant juncture with the departure of the UK, substantial rule of law challenges, internal and external crises, and an increasingly apathetic multilateral legal order. There is increased recognition amongst EU lawyers, who have historically limited themselves to doctrinal analysis and legal hermeneutics, that methodology plays an essential role in order to understand EU integration and shape its future.

The question remains though how to connect interdisciplinary approaches to EU law, policy and politics. How should EU law (as an object) be studied? What are the respective merits of each discipline (political science, sociology, economy, history) in explaining the way EU law is created, applied, used, transformed in the process of EU integration? What is the added value of bringing together different approaches to law? In particular, how can EU law (as an academic discipline) open itself up to the methods of the social sciences and what, in return, can law offer to our understanding of EU studies more widely?

In order to answer these questions, EUFutures brings together scholars to:

  • reflect on the future methodological direction(s) of EU law and EU integration;
  • provide methodological training for EU lawyers interested in interdisciplinary study;
  • consider both how law could open itself up to methodologies from other disciplines, and what legal analysis could offer political, economic and historical approaches.