Teaching political-legal approaches to EU law

The action and his team will promote excellence in teaching and research in EU Studies and deepen the students and young professionals’ knowledge in EU subjects relevant for their academic and professional lives. It builds and consolidates a cluster of high-quality, research-based and interdisciplinary courses on EU law and Politics. The EUPolex courses deepen the teaching curriculum on EU legal studies at the University of Copenhagen by focusing particularly (but not exclusively) on three subject fields: a) Law & politics in EU governance, b) EU judicial politics: national and European courts, c) Empirical approaches to EU law.

The courses focused on developing and strengthening the following competences and skills: knowledge on EU law and politics; cognitive, analytical and methodological as well as research, communication, and writing skills. As a result, students acquire the foundations for 1) thinking critically about recent challenges and future advances in EU integration and EU studies, and 2) being empowered as agents of legal change within the EU society.

The Action promotes, in collaboration with experts in the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Copenhagen and universities around Europe, interdisciplinarity and innovation in teaching and research in EU law with the active implication of the students. EUPoLex courses involve traditional didactical methods (lectures), but will equally put important emphasis on more innovative forms of teaching, such as in-class usage of experimental methods and simulations (e.g. on EU democracy and Treaty negotiations); deployment of digital resources accessible in the website (incl. online lectures, readings, blogs, discussion groups, and event updates), as well as research-based techniques (e.g. peer-feedback, presentations, writing of research papers and blogposts, research roundtables).

 

 

The courses “Legalization of EU Politics” (Search courses in the course database)  and “How Populism Threatens the Rule of Law, Democracy and Integration in Europe” (Search courses in the course database)  (both in English) are offered in the bachelor and master's degree program in law and in political science at the University of Copenhagen.

The goal of these courses is to provide BA and MA students with an interdisciplinary perspective to explore the interface between law and politics in the EU. The courses build upon previous knowledge of the students about the foundations of EU law and institutions and it deploys it to analyse the most recent developments from the ‘law & politics’ and ‘judicial politics’ domain. It offers new insights about how politics is deeply intertwined with the EU law-making process. In particular, the courses deepen students’ knowledge by adding a political science perspective to their current approach to legal and judicial institutions.

The courses implement research-based techniques by requiring students to investigate an EU legal topic and provide answers grounded in political-legal approaches. In this regard, the students undertake a research exercise, under the supervision of the Chair, where they to find an answer(s) to a problem and present it to a broader audience. The research papers will be used to promote a new generation of scholars in the field by publishing the best papers at the Copenhagen Journal of Legal Studies.

These courses also integrate “guest lectures” with key EU scholars, policy-makers and experts in current EU contemporary legal and political affairs. The lectures activate and consolidate the knowledge and skills of the students acquired during the EUPoLex courses by engaging them in discussions with key scholars and actors in the fabric of EU law. The course lectures are frequently integrated as part of the EUPoLex talk series.

 

 

 

The action provides students with insight on the design and implementation of research techniques through two types of activities: a master course on “Empirical Legal Research: Design and methods” (Search courses in the course database)  courses and a series of “advance methodological workshops” offered in English at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen.

The purpose of the master course on “Empirical Legal Research: Design and methods” is to provide students with insight into the design and implementation of empirical methods and techniques used in Law and Politics research. Due to what has been labelled an ‘empirical turn in legal scholarship,’ students and researchers within law are increasingly drawing on both quantitative and qualitative research methods in their research. In this wider context, empirical research methods, such as statistical inference and interviews, have played a pivotal role for the emerging scholarship of EU Law and Politics. Therefore, it is crucial to enable students with the skills and competences to perform original studies that situate their research in contemporary EU scholarly currents and to address ongoing debates about the role of empirical work in EU legal studies.

Moreover, students increasingly have to compete on a Danish and European market in which empirical methods have become increasingly prevalent, especially to communicate with the professions and disciplines connected with politics. In this regard, professionals must be able to recognize when empirical research is useful and needs to be applied in policy and legal analysis. As such, it is important to equip students with the necessary theoretical and practical tools in order to facilitate effective and coherent tools to conducting empirical research for exploring the intersection between EU law and politics.

The course is designed to provide the students the opportunity to work hands-on with research question and how to plan and execute an original empirical based project on EU law and Politics though interview, survey and data analyses techniques. Moreover, the course lays the basic theoretical foundations and offer the basic skills that the students and researches to participate in more advance EUPoLex methods courses. As result, master students learn how to implement an empirical research design, how to distinguish between methodologies, and how to identify and choose research methods relevant to their main subject(s) of research inquiry in EU law and Politics.

With the aim of providing deeper methodological training to the students and future researchers, the action, in collaboration with the PhD school at the Faculty of Law, will offer more advance methods workshops on interviews, surveys, network analysis, etc., for carrying research in EU law and Politics.

Past courses 2019-2020:

- PhD Course on “Introduction to Methodology and Research Methods in Law”. 9-11 December 2019 - The PhD School, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen.

- PhD-Postdoc workshop on "The Politics of the EU Judicial Power" aka: "Oops Your Conference Was Cancelled" Workshop. 28 May 2020. Co-organized with PluriCourts and the European University Institute.

Courses and lectures in preparation for 2021:

- Lecture on “Law & Political Science” at PhD Course on “Research Methods in Law”. 4 February 2021 - The PhD School, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen.

- PhD and Postdoctoral course on “Interviews” by Juan A. Mayoral (iCourts). 11 & 18 February 2021. In collaboration with Imagine ERC project

- PhD Course on “Process-tracing and Case Law Analysis” by Tomasso Pavone (PluriCourts). April 2021. The PhD School, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen