Researching the European Court of Justice: Methodological Shifts and Law's Embeddedness

Description

The book takes stock of the on-going 'methodological turn' in the field of EU law scholarship. Introducing a new generation of scholars of the European Court of Justice from law, history, sociology, political science and linguistics, it provides a set of novel interdisciplinary research strategies and empirical materials for the study of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The twelve case studies included challenge the usual top-down approach to EU law and the CJEU and instead suggest a more localized and fine-grained observation of the socio-legal actors and practices involved in the making of CJEU case-law. Moving beyond mainstream legal scholarship and the established 'grand narratives' of legal integration, the volume provides a more historically-informed and sociologically-grounded account of the EU law's uneven embeddedness in Europe's economies and societies.

Mikael Rask Madsen is a Professor of European Law and Integration, at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen and Director and founder of iCourts, Centre of Excellence for International Courts. He has published widely on international law and institutions and his research has been recognized by a number of prizes, including the Elite Researcher Prize and the Carlsberg Research Prize. Fernanda G. Nicola is a Professor at American University Washington College of Law and she is a Permanent Visiting Professor at iCourts the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre of Excellence for International Courts. She is a co-editor of EU Law Stories: Contextual and Critical Histories of European Jurisprudence (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Antoine Vauchez is a CNRS Research Professor in political sociology and law at the Universite Paris 1-Sorbonne and a Permanent Visiting Professor at iCourts the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre of Excellence for International Courts. He is currently Michael Endres Visiting Professor at the Hertie school of government in Berlin. His recent books explore the intersection between law, politics and democracy, including Brokering Europe. Euro-lawyers and the Making of a Transnational Polity (Cambridge University Press, 2015).