In Europe there is, and has been for some years, a seemingly renewed debate on methodology in legal research. In the first years of its existence, EU law was generally perceived as rather superficial, immature, and fragmentary, with many gaps and inconsistencies. Now, EU law is ripening and the mutual embeddedness of EU law and the national law of its Member States is becoming more intense. It is therefore both more possible, and more necessary, to identify and explain the legal method that is applied by European legal actors, in particular legal scholars and courts, when analyzing EU law and the law of Member States within the scope of EU legal application. This book brings together essays by leading legal scholars from a number of European countries regarding European legal method(s). It is the second publication within the European Legal Methods research project and is the result of a conference held in November 2011. The contributors are all focused on different legal disciplines and represent different legal cultures and research styles, partly related to different geographical backgrounds.
This book brings together essays by leading legal scholars from a number of European countries on European legal method(s). In Europe there is, and has for some years been, a seemingly renewed debate on methodology in legal research. In the first years of its existence EU law was generally perceived as rather superficial, immature and fragmentary with many gaps and inconsistencies. Now, EU law is ripening and the mutual embeddedness of EU law and the national law of its Member States is becoming more intense. It is therefore both more possible and more necessary to identify and explain the legal method that is applied by European legal actors, in particular legal scholars and courts, when analysing EU law and the law of EU Member States within the scope of application of EU law. This book is the second publication within the European Legal Methods research project and is the result of a conference held in November 2011. Most of the contributors are all legal scholars concerned within d
This book examines the extent to which it is possible to identify a coherent legal method (a doctrine of the sources of law and their interpretation) that may be applied when analyzing EU law and the law of EU Member States. European Legal Method: Paradoxes and Revitalisation looks at what characterizes the sources of law and the interpretation methods that are actually used by European legal actors, especially judges and researchers. It examines the changes in the relative importance of various sources of law that occur in connection with the integration of EU law into national law.
The Palgrave Macmillan Law Masters series is a long-running and successful list of titles offering clear, concise and authoritative guides to the main subject areas, written by experienced and respected authors. This ninth edition of Legal Method provides a lively introduction to the nature of the English legal system and its sources, and to the techniques which lawyers use when handling those sources. The text assumes no prior knowledge and makes its content accessible by clarity of expression rather than by dilution of content. In addition to more conventional sources, writers as varied as Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and T. S. Eliot are cited. This is an ideal course companion for both law undergraduate and GDL/CPE students. Includes end of chapter summaries and self-test exercises.
Greater efficiency in civil dispute resolution is very much dependent on organized but fair fact-finding. Under European law, however, no clear-cut categorisation of means of evidence exists as yet, and significantly diverging interpretations persist of what is considered 'evidence' in the sense of the foundational Council Regulation (EC) No. 1206/2001 (EER). The EER fails to provide comprehensive rules for many other aspects of evidence taking, pointing instead to national legislation for solutions. As long as evidentiary rules remain different from country to country, there is an inherent risk of conflict of laws between different systems in the course of cooperation between courts in cross-border matters, leading to mistrust amongst judiciary and other participants in the proceedings. Focusing on national rules, and using a comparative method which takes into consideration legal experiences from all legal circles in the EU, this book explains and analyses how the law of evidence works in Europe today. The authors draw on the vast base of relevant information collected in twenty-seven Member States by national reporters. Following the classical enumeration of types of evidence – production of documents, examination of witnesses, expert evidence, inspection by the judge, and examination of the parties – chapters encompass such issues and topics as the following. - judicial cooperation in cross-border cases; – general principles in evidence taking (the right to be heard, oral vs. written form, directness of evidence, burden of proof); – judges' case management powers regarding evidence; – means of evidence; – extent of influence of traditional principles and evidentiary rules on electronic evidence; – application of communication technology in cross-border proceedings; – legal costs; – language; – inadmissible evidence; and – instances in which a court can refuse a request for evidence. The authors offer well-grounded recommendations on requested judge's entitlements, direct and convenient communication, cost issues, revised provisions concerning language obstacles, unification of presumptions, and much more. Armed with the wide-ranging knowledge presented here, practitioners handling civil cases anywhere in Europe will derive great practical benefit from this book. As a masterful synthesis of how evidence is used in national courts in EU Member States, and of how that use is changing, the book will be greatly valued as a unique resource by legal scholars and academics. With featured recommendations it can contribute to the development of mutual trust among the national courts inside the EU as well as trust among policymakers and national courts.
"EU law is an autonomous legal system. It requires its own methodology. The contributions to this volume provide elements of a genuinely European legal method. They discuss the foundations of European legal methodology in Roman law and in the development of national legal methods in the 19th century as well as the economic and comparative background. Core issues of legal methods such as the sources of law, the interpretation of EU primary law and secondary legislation, the concretisation of general clauses, and judicial development of the law are also analysed. The temporal effects of EU directives on the one hand and of judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the other raise specific issues of EU law. Contributions are also devoted to issues of a multi-level legal system. Beyond general aspects, directives, in particular, raise special questions: what is their impact on the interpretation of national law; and what are the methodological consequences of a transposition of directives beyond their original scope ('gold-plating')? Further contributions inquire into methodological issues in contract law, employment law, company law, capital market law and competition law. They illustrate the general aspects of European legal methods with a view to specific applications and also reveal specific issues of methods which occur in these areas. Finally, legal methods from national perspectives of different Member States, namely France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom, are examined. The authors reveal national traditions of legal methods and national preconceptions and illustrate the application of EU legal methods in different national contexts."--Back cover.
Making a key contribution to the contemporary debate about methods in European legal research, this comprehensive book looks behind different methodologies to explore the institutional, disciplinary, and political conflicts that shape questions of ‘method’ or ‘approach’ in European legal scholarship. Offering a new perspective on the underlying politics of method, it identifies four core dimensions of methodological struggle in legal research – the politics of questions, the politics of answers, the politics of legal audiences, and the politics of the concept of law.
All legal texts tell us stories in many ways. What stories, what narratives, can be found in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union? This book invites the reader to think of the world of EU law as a creative process. From such a perspective, the adjudicative praxis of the Court is an intellectual, cultural, literary activity, in which the reader can imagine him- or herself participating. The author develops a novel hermeneutic methodology to examine the textual performance of the Court, by combining the work of American 'Law and Literature' scholar James Boyd White with the work of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. This methodology allows for an analysis of the role played by the Court in its legal reasoning and the vision of humanity it demonstrates: narratives of 'self' and 'other.' The synthesis of two case studies (on economically inactive EU citizens' access to social benefits, and on data protection and privacy) results in an open-ended and self-reflective examination of the narratives about human agency and human responsibility in the case law of the Court of Justice European Union.
It is generally understood that EU law as interpreted by the ECJ has not merely reconstituted the national legal matrix at the supranational level, but has also transformed Europe and shaken the well-established, often formalist, ways of thinking about law in the Member States. This innovative new study seeks to examine such a narrative through the lens of the American critical legal studies (CLS) perspective. The introduction explains how the editors understand CLS and why its methodology is relevant in the European context. Part II examines whether and how judges embed policy choices or even ideologies in their decisions, and how to detect them. Part III assesses how the ECJ acts to ensure the legitimacy of its decisions, whether it resists implementing political ideologies, what the ideology of European integration is, and how the selection of judges influences these issues. Part IV uses the critical perspective to examine some substantive parts of EU law, rules on internal and external movement, and the European arrest warrant. It seeks to determine whether the role of the ECJ has really been transformative and whether that transformation is reversible. Part V considers the role of academics in shaping the narratives of EU integration.
European law, including both civil law and common law, has gone through several major phases of expansion in the world. European legal history thus also is a history of legal transplants and cultural borrowings, which national legal histories as products of nineteenth-century historicism have until recently largely left unconsidered. The Handbook of European Legal History supplies its readers with an overview of the different phases of European legal history in the light of today's state-of-the-art research, by offering cutting-edge views on research questions currently emerging in international discussions. The Handbook takes a broad approach to its subject matter both nationally and systemically. Unlike traditional European legal histories, which tend to concentrate on "heartlands" of Europe (notably Italy and Germany), the Europe of the Handbook is more versatile and nuanced, taking into consideration the legal developments in Europe's geographical "fringes" such as Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The Handbook covers all major time periods, from the ancient Greek law to the twenty-first century. Contributors include acknowledged leaders in the field as well as rising talents, representing a wide range of legal systems, methodologies, areas of expertise and research agendas.
