Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union, this book offers 'thick' descriptions, contextual histories and critical narratives engaging with leading or minor personalities involved behind the scenes of each case. The contributions depart from the notion that EU law and its history should be narrated in a linear and incremental way to show instead that law evolves in a contingent and not determinate manner. The book shows that the effects of judge-made law remain relatively indeterminate and each case can be retold through different contextual narratives, and shows the commitment of the European legal elites to the experience of legal reasoning. The idea to cluster the stories around prominent cases is not to be fully comprehensive, but to re-focus the scholarship and teaching of EU law by moving beyond the black letter and unravel the lawyering techniques to achieve policy results.
Revealing context and stories behind leading European Court of Justice rulings, the book will appeal to students interested in understanding the making and the functioning of EU law through the eyes of many interlocutors of the Court, including winners and losers in each case.
Retells stories by leading scholars or participants in the cases from a different perspective, and so the book reveals new insights, including lawyering techniques together with social and political contexts, into the established canon of EU law.
By bringing together lawyers, historians, political scientists and political economists, the volume achieves original cross-disciplinary insights into the field of EU law.
