Periodic Reporting for period 1 - UNITE (Unification Through Law: The Court of Justice of the European Union as Cultural-Moral Agent)
Período documentado: 2019-10-01 hasta 2021-09-30
The main aim of the UNITE project was (1) to reveal the cultural narratives underlying the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) through the (2) use of a new research method grounded in political philosophy and (3) to explore the identified narratives’ potential of cultural re(production. More specifically, by drawing from cultural legal studies, UNITE started from the presumption of the judicial opinion constituting a cultural artefact through which cultural narratives are transmitted that offer imaginative means to citizens to explain themselves and their community. For the purpose of disentangling such narratives, UNITE suggested the use of a wide range of political philosophies (liberalism, utilitarianism, perfectionism, communitarianism, and post-Marxist-theory) as analytical tool through which the judgements of the Court of Justice can be read and understood. After having revealed some cultural narratives underlying the CJEU’s case-law, UNITE examined whether such narratives have the potential of cultural re(production) in that they are actually able to alter political consciousness, that is, how citizen’s think about the community they inhabit. This research objectives of UNITE have a distinct social relevance because they shed light on the importance of the language used by legal scholars use when analyzing and interpreting EU law. More precisely, what I hope to have improved with my research is the awareness amongst judges, lawyers, and legal scholars as to the impact of the language they use in legal interpretations for the EU’s political identity.
The three foci of UNITE explained above also display in three distinct Work Packages (WP).
1)WP1: Identifying the Embodiment of Different Political Philosophies in EU: Although the Covid-19 crises started a couple of months after I had commenced my work on the UNITE project, the objective of identifying different political philosophies in different fields of EU law proved to be a fruitful exercise, which ultimately lead to two publications in the first year of my Marie Curie Fellowship. First, and inspired by the readings on various political philosophies concerned with forms of distributive forms of justice, I published a case-note in the highly-prestigious, peer-revied, open access Common Market Law Review on a gender equality case dealing with questions on mother’s pensions Second, and due to my efforts to re-connect with my networks at the Court of Justice of the European Union (as part of the objectives of UNITE), I wrote an article with the former British judge Christopher Vajda on a range of judgements in the realm of EU external relations and trade law and the role of certain court judgement therein.
2)WP2: Deciphering the Cultural Narratives Underlying the CJEU’s Case-Law: The result of working package two has been an article laying out the methodological and theoretical foundations of a cultural study of EU law and displaying the value-added of such method for the disentanglement of various narratives in the case-law of the ECJ on the basis of various cases. After presenting a draft version of this article in an EU Law Seminar at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in May of 2022, the editors of the European Law Open (who had been part of the audience) encouraged me to submit the paper. This is what I eventually did: I submitted the article (with the title: ‘Unearthing Political Theories in the Interpretation of EU Law’), laying out a novel way of reading EU law based on a method grounded in literary, anthropological, and philosophical insights to the European Law Open (which is open access journal).
3)WP3: Examining the Cultural Narratives’ Potentiality of Cultural Re(Production): Throughout working package three, I mainly engaged with the work of cultural legal studies scholars, such as Paul Kahn (analyzing the impact of legal language on law’s social legitimacy and people’s way of being) as well as the work of Ulrich Haltern and my former supervisor Joseph Weiler (both of whom have investigated the socio-economic meaning of the case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU). Against the background of this research focus of UNITE, it was a particular pleasure and honor for me to have been invited to a conference on the jurisprudence of Paul Kahn in Glasgow in March of 2022 (‘Law and Political Imagination. Workshop on the Jurisprudence of Paul W. Kahn’). At this conference, I presented a draft paper laying out my initial thoughts on the cultural force of the law, which will in its more elaborate forms be published next year (2023) in a symposium issue on the jurisprudence of Paul Kahn in the German Law Journal (an open access journal). Furthermore, I was also particularly pleased that, amongst others, Ulrich Haltern and Joseph Weiler had agreed to come to the final conference on the UNITE project organized at iCourts (in July of 2022). Due to Covid-19, the conference unfortunately had to be postponed to spring of 2023.
1)WP1: Identifying the Embodiment of Different Political Philosophies in EU: Although the Covid-19 crises started a couple of months after I had commenced my work on the UNITE project, the objective of identifying different political philosophies in different fields of EU law proved to be a fruitful exercise, which ultimately lead to two publications in the first year of my Marie Curie Fellowship. First, and inspired by the readings on various political philosophies concerned with forms of distributive forms of justice, I published a case-note in the highly-prestigious, peer-revied, open access Common Market Law Review on a gender equality case dealing with questions on mother’s pensions Second, and due to my efforts to re-connect with my networks at the Court of Justice of the European Union (as part of the objectives of UNITE), I wrote an article with the former British judge Christopher Vajda on a range of judgements in the realm of EU external relations and trade law and the role of certain court judgement therein.
2)WP2: Deciphering the Cultural Narratives Underlying the CJEU’s Case-Law: The result of working package two has been an article laying out the methodological and theoretical foundations of a cultural study of EU law and displaying the value-added of such method for the disentanglement of various narratives in the case-law of the ECJ on the basis of various cases. After presenting a draft version of this article in an EU Law Seminar at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in May of 2022, the editors of the European Law Open (who had been part of the audience) encouraged me to submit the paper. This is what I eventually did: I submitted the article (with the title: ‘Unearthing Political Theories in the Interpretation of EU Law’), laying out a novel way of reading EU law based on a method grounded in literary, anthropological, and philosophical insights to the European Law Open (which is open access journal).
3)WP3: Examining the Cultural Narratives’ Potentiality of Cultural Re(Production): Throughout working package three, I mainly engaged with the work of cultural legal studies scholars, such as Paul Kahn (analyzing the impact of legal language on law’s social legitimacy and people’s way of being) as well as the work of Ulrich Haltern and my former supervisor Joseph Weiler (both of whom have investigated the socio-economic meaning of the case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU). Against the background of this research focus of UNITE, it was a particular pleasure and honor for me to have been invited to a conference on the jurisprudence of Paul Kahn in Glasgow in March of 2022 (‘Law and Political Imagination. Workshop on the Jurisprudence of Paul W. Kahn’). At this conference, I presented a draft paper laying out my initial thoughts on the cultural force of the law, which will in its more elaborate forms be published next year (2023) in a symposium issue on the jurisprudence of Paul Kahn in the German Law Journal (an open access journal). Furthermore, I was also particularly pleased that, amongst others, Ulrich Haltern and Joseph Weiler had agreed to come to the final conference on the UNITE project organized at iCourts (in July of 2022). Due to Covid-19, the conference unfortunately had to be postponed to spring of 2023.
The research project UNITE had a considerable impact on my career. It allowed me to not only come closer to qualifying for an Assistant Professorship Position (as laied out in the project proposal), but allowed to ultimately gain such a position. After only 13 months of research (while being on maternity leave) I successfully obtained a position of Assistant Professor of EU Law at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Furthermore, the UNITE project has allowed me to realize my ambition of pursuing a truly interdisciplinary research approach and to increase the impact of my work by being able to address different audiences, which has resulted in invitations to present my work, to join several conferences and publications, to participate in research projects, and to expand my professional network considerably. As an early career researcher, and given that I was only about to complete my PhD when applying for the UNITE project, I had no idea how much visibility the Marie Curie Fellowship would give me and what positive impact it would have on my academic career.
As to the broader socio-economic impact of UNITE, I believe that my research has the potential of improving the awareness of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars that the language they use to interpret and analyze EU law can have enormous impacts on EU’s political identity. This is especially important at a time in which the EU is facing several different crises, reaching from the 2012-euro crisis to the ongoing ‘rule of law’ crisis, passing through Brexit, the refugee crisis of 2016, or the current Covid-19 crises. I have explained the message of the UNITE project (about the influence of legal language on our common European identity) to the EU legal community in various conference presentations and publications throughout my Marie Curie Fellowship. Furthermore, I believe that I have contributed to the rethinking of some strongly-held beliefs in the EU legal scholarship as to the meaning of EU law through my way of teaching EU law to EU students (which is strongly inspired by the conviction that the language of the law matters) and the conversations I had with my academic and professional EU legal network.
As to the broader socio-economic impact of UNITE, I believe that my research has the potential of improving the awareness of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars that the language they use to interpret and analyze EU law can have enormous impacts on EU’s political identity. This is especially important at a time in which the EU is facing several different crises, reaching from the 2012-euro crisis to the ongoing ‘rule of law’ crisis, passing through Brexit, the refugee crisis of 2016, or the current Covid-19 crises. I have explained the message of the UNITE project (about the influence of legal language on our common European identity) to the EU legal community in various conference presentations and publications throughout my Marie Curie Fellowship. Furthermore, I believe that I have contributed to the rethinking of some strongly-held beliefs in the EU legal scholarship as to the meaning of EU law through my way of teaching EU law to EU students (which is strongly inspired by the conviction that the language of the law matters) and the conversations I had with my academic and professional EU legal network.