Is European law European? Exploring the structure of the social field of EU legal scholarship and its influence on the construction of meaning in EU law

iCourts Lunch Seminar with Jaka Kukavica.

Abstract 

In 2024, the European Union (EU) celebrated the 20th anniversary of the largest enlargement process in its history, which was intended to unite different parts of Europe after decades of division. Yet, two decades later, EU law as an academic discipline still appears to be divided. For instance, a series of volumes was published in early 2010s in which 30 scholars of EU law collaborated on the construction of the concept of “European legal methods.” Of these 30 authors, only a single one was from any of the 13 post-2004 enlargement Member States, or was affiliated with an institution in one of those Member States.

Such a structure of the European academic landscape implies a markedly limited conception of “European-ness,” which perpetuates a multi-layered hierarchical dynamic between the core and the periphery of the EU. Although the asymmetrical structure of the EU academic field is often discussed informally among academics, the scholarly literature has so far contributed little to the study of the structure of European legal scholarship; the actors that comprise it; the social capital they possess; and their influence on the ideas generated and maintained in EU law.

The project “Is European Law European?: Exploring the Structure of the Social Field of EU Legal Scholarship and its Influence on the Construction of Meaning in EU Law” (PANEULEX) aims to fill this gap by establishing a new understanding of the construction of EU law as an academic discipline, the power relations between the core and the periphery of the EU, which are inextricably linked to its formation, and the influence that such power relations have on the creation of knowledge, by posing a simple overarching question: is European Union law European?

With the hope of starting as broad of a discussion, and garner as much critical feedback as possible, this lunch-seminar will present the PANEULEX project, the problems it addresses, the questions it poses, the objectives it follows, and the methodologies it employs in pursuing its overall aim: to investigate the validity of the presumed unity of EU law as a system of knowledge.

Speaker bio

Jaka Kukavica is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana. From February 2026 to January 2028, he is on research leave as a Visiting Researcher at the iCourts Center of Excellence at Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, working on his postdoctoral research project titled »Is European Law European? Exploring the Structure of the Social Field of EU Legal Scholarship and its Influence on the Construction of Meaning in EU Law (PANEULEX)«, which is funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency through a MSCA PF complementary funding scheme.

He studied law in Ljubljana and Cambridge and holds a PhD from European University Institute. His doctoral dissertation titled "Structural Values in Judicial Reasoning: Consensus Analysis in Constitutional and Supranational Contexts" was awarded the 2025 Mauro Cappelletti Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis in Comparative and European Law. Jaka has held visiting positions at multiple leading institutions across continents, including University of Michigan Law School, iCourts Center of Excellence at University of Copenhagen, Utrecht University School of Law, and the Australian National University College of Law. His research interests are in the fields of European constitutional law, EU law, European human rights law, and comparative constitutional law.