Page:ELO 1(1), 113–125. Here be dragons legal geography and EU law.pdf/8

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120     Floris de Witte

likewise, offer very rich research on what happens ‘on the ground’ on these sites, without necessarily appreciating the contingent nature of the sites’ legal regulation.[1]

A second site of recent spatial interest for EU lawyers has been the city. The work of Michèle Finck and Fernanda Nicola, for example, sheds light on the role of subnational actors in the (constitutional) governance of the EU, and their role as sites for the mediation of EU law within local, spatial peculiarities.[2] Tommaso Pavone has undertaken work on how local culture, identity and context affect judges and their engagement with EU law through the preliminary reference procedure.[3] Giacomo Tagiuri, in his research, looks at how EU law affects licensing and zoning rules, and their impact on local cultural and local identities, particularly in the urban setting.[4] The work by Ran Hirschl and Saskia Sassen, equally, focuses in very different ways on the framework within which global cities emerged and are constituted.[5] Most of this work is rooted in the constitutional or socio-legal tradition. Meanwhile, Antonia Layard, one of the few scholars who is both well versed in EU law and legal geography, has recently put the study of ‘urban law’ on the map in Europe.[6] Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez’s work on ‘the Mall’ equally uses an explicit spatial perspective to analyse the way in which the legal regulation of particular places impacts on anti-discrimination norms and fundamental rights.[7] Just as is the case for scholars of urban law, legal geographers are drawn to cities: cities constitute places where a large number of legal demands collide – from consumer protection and housing to health and safety; from zoning rules to infrastructural demands; and where problems related to inequality and race are particularly pronounced and often explicitly spatial.[8]

A third type of space that EU lawyers are increasingly ‘finding’ relates to more-than-humans and the environment, even if this still remains primarily the domain of geographers and

  1. P Cuttitta, ‘Non-Governmental/Civil Society Organisations and the European Union: Externalisation of Migration Management in Tunisia and Egypt’ 26 (2020) Population, Space and Place 232; M Kristensen, ‘EU Border Officials and Critical Complicity: The Politics of Location and Ethnographic Knowledge as Additions’ 9 (2020) Social Inclusion 169; S Yakhlef, Cross-Border Police Collaboration: Building Communities of Practice in the Baltic Sea Area (Routledge 2020); E McCluskey, ‘Freedom, Technology and Surveillance: Everyday Paradoxes on the EU–Morocco Border’ 6 (2020) International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 412; C Oelgemoller, ‘International Migration: Transit Space – Creative Space?’ 3 (2017) International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 121.
  2. M Finck, Subnational Authorities in EU Law (Oxford University Press 2017); F Nicola, ‘Invisible Cities in Europe’ 35 (2017) Fordham International Law Journal 1282. See also A Bobic and J Van Zeben, Polycentricity in the European Union (Cambridge University Press 2019); C Panara, ‘The “Europe of Regions” before the Court of Justice’ 26 (2019) Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 271; M De Visser, ‘The Future is Urban: The Progressive Renaissance of the City in EU Law’ 7 (2020) Journal of International and Comparative Law 389; M Barbenhon, ‘Europeanisation as Discursive Process: Urban Constructions of Europe and the Local Implementation of EU Directives’ 38 (2016) Journal of European Integration 163; S De Gregorio Hurtado, ‘Understanding the Influence of EU Urban Policy in Spanish Cities: The Case of Malaga’ (2019) Urban Research & Practice; J Bazylinska-Nagler, ‘Smart City Landscape Protection: EU Law Perspective’ in A Brdulak and H Brdulak, Happy City: How to Plan and Create the Best Liveable Area for the People (Springer 2017).
  3. Pavone, ‘Putting European Constitutionalism in Its Place’ (n 19) 669.
  4. G Tagiuri, ‘The Cultural Implications of Market Regulation: Does the EU Destroy the Texture of National Life?’ (on file with author); G Tagiuri, ‘Can Supranational Law Enhance Democracy? EU Economic Law as a Market-Democratizing Project’ 32 (2021) European Journal of International Law 57. On zoning laws, see also J Janderova and S Gyamfi, ‘How Can Public Influence Zoning Plans to Protect Environment? Case of the Czech Republic and Indirect Effect of EU Law’ 1 (2016) International Journal of Environmental Science 326.
  5. R Hirschl, City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity (Oxford University Press 2020); S Sassen, Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces and Subjects (Routledge 2007).
  6. A Layard, ‘Researching Urban Law’ 21 (2020) German Law Journal 1446.
  7. S Hennette-Vauchez, ‘The Mall’ 36 (2020) Revue Francaise de Droit Administratif 833.
  8. The question of housing has received some attention in EU law: S Reynolds, ‘Housing Policy as a Restriction of Free Movement and Member States’ Discretion to Design Programmes of Social Protection: Libert’ 52 (2015) Common Market Law Review 259; M Elsingaa and H Lind, ‘The Effect of EU-Legislation on Rental Systems in Sweden and the Netherlands’ 28 (2013) Housing Studies 960; I Domurath, ‘Housing as a “Double Irritant” in EU Law: Towards an SGEI between Markets and Local Needs’ 38 (2019) Yearbook of European Law 400.