The first full-blooded demolition job on the Court’s federalising tendencies and integrationist ideology did not come until 1986;[1] its author, Hjalte Rasmussen, received a trouncing from mainstream EC lawyers, outraged by the idea that the law/politics boundary had been crossed.[2] Reviewing it, Harm Schepel observed that this was only natural; the law/politics distinction was central nor only to the Court’s legitimacy but also to ‘the whole project of European integration’. Looking back from the millennium year, Schepel was able to point to a body of interdisciplinary research to prove his point that lawyers were starting to look outside studies of rules and principles for full explanations of the legal integration process, while social scientists were beginning to integrate the Court and its constitutionalising case law into their work. ‘Integrationist orthodoxy was no longer the only accepted discourse in legal academia’. Criticising the Court had become ‘the trend’.[3]
This brief review of law in context scholarship in European law has been largely a historical survey, which ends with the founding of the European Law Journal (ELJ). The ELJ appeared on the scene in 1995 specifically as a ‘Review of the Law in Context’ with Francis Snyder as Founding Editor-in-Chief,[4] a prestigious international and interdisciplinary advisory Board, useful links to the Commission and considerable input from the European University Institute. Its remit was ‘to express and develop the study and understanding of European law in its social, cultural, political and economic contexts’.[5] The first issue began as the editors hoped to go on. Two economists, a sociologist and a political scientist wrote for the first two issues, which contained sector-specific studies of social policy, labour law and EU governance. Significantly, there were not and never have been any case notes.
In some ways, the ELJ might be seen as Francis Snyder’s chief and longest-lasting contribution to European legal scholarship, but he has made many others. He was the first to urge European legal scholars to abandon the safe areas of competition and labour law and to provide sectorspecific studies of less accessible areas. He has encouraged cultural pluralism and with the International Workshops for Young Scholars (WISH), provided a platform for young scholars to publish on innovative topics such as food security, law and religion, and many others. In his own work, he provided the model for law in context and interdisciplinary studies. The legacy has proved to be enduring. As I write, an email has pinged into my inbox announcing the imminent publication of a new textbook.[6] European Union Law in Context claims to provide ‘an explanatory and contextual view of EU law and its impact in a simple and easily accessible yet analytical manner’. It is to illustrate the power struggles behind a given EU law act, to allow for full understanding of how it developed, so as to encourage an understanding of EU law as a force in the increasingly globalised world, rather than as technical and doctrinal subject. In short, a law in context study.
- ↑ H Rasmussen, On Law and Policy in the Court of Justice (Martinus Nijhoff 1986).
- ↑ See eg, JHH Weiler, ‘The Court of Justice on Trial – A review of Hjalte Rasmussen: On Law and Policy in the European Court of Justice’ 24 (1987) Common Market Law Review 555–89; M Cappelletti, ‘Is the European Court of Justice “Running Wild”?’ 12 (1987) European Law Review 311–22; AG Toth, ‘On Law and Policy in the European Court of Justice by H. Rasmussen’ 7 (1987) Yearbook of European Law 411–13; M Shapiro, ‘On Law and Policy in the European Court of Justice’ 81 (1987) American Journal of International Law 1007–11.
- ↑ H Schepel, ‘Reconstructing Constitutionalization: Law and Politics in the European Court of Justice’ 20 (2000) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 457, 458–9, a review article of Rasmussen (above n. 41) and R Dehousse, The European Court of Justice: The Politics of Judicial Integration (Palgrave Macmillan 1998), a mildly critical law in context study of the Court.
- ↑ There were five editors: Francis Snyder, Christian Joerges, Joseph Weiler, Brian Bercusson and Antoine Lyon-Caen. The publisher was Basil Blackwell.
- ↑ F Snyder, ‘Editorial’ 1 (1995) European Law Journal 1–4.
- ↑ E Herlin-Karnell, G Conway and A Ganesh, European Union Law in Context (Hart Publishing 2021).
Cite this article: Harlow C (2022). The EU and law in context: the context. European Law Open 1, 209–215. https://doi.org/10.1017/elo.2022.10
