IMAGINE/iCourts lunch seminar with Jacob van de Beeten
Post integration through law: An immanent critique of the systemic rationality of EU law
Abstract
Integration through law tends to be assessed from the perspective of the effects it produces, but more than a set of rules, EU law is also a language which frames the project of integration on its own terms. From a legal perspective, European integration is first and an exercise in legal order building and the authority of the ECJ is premised on maintaining that order. Whilst EU law is often conceptualized as an instrument to realize the objectives of integration and the values on which the EU is founded, I argue such an understanding is premised on the idea of EU legal order as a legal system. It does so through discursive techniques which exhibit a systemic rationality, this is a form of reasoning (1) aims to maintain EU legal order; (2) has a self-referential character; (3) and operates through a process of dynamic stabilisation. Rendering explicit the systemic rationality at the core of EU law forms a first step in the process of rethinking what European integration should be about.
Speaker bio
Jacob van de Beeten writes a PhD at the London School of Economics under the supervision of prof. Mike Wilkinson and Dr. De Witte.
He is interested in the way EU law frames the experience of European integration and the performative role of language in legal discourse.
Meeting ID: 611 9646 4002
Passcode: 892014