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 PhD students, ECRs and senior scholars from across the globe 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.
Our objectives are:
- To forge an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on EU law from the perspective of different disciplines, and interested in cross-disciplinary approaches to law and EU integration;
- To promote innovative research and provide robust training on different methodological approaches in the field;
- To develop new conceptual insights and approaches;
- To analyse scenarios for the future of European legal integration based on recent developments.
Any scholar with an interest in these questions, is welcome to join the network. Please contact the coordinators Elaine Fahey, Fabien Terpan or Rebecca Zahn for further information.
This Research Network is supported by the James Madison Charitable Trust.
