Antoine Vauchez, Brokering Europe. Euro-Lawyers and the Making of a Transnational Polity

Antoine Vauchez
Brokering Europe
Euro-Lawyers and the Making of a Transnational Polity
Cambridge University Press
2015

Version remaniée de L’Union par le droit. L’invention d’un programme institutionnel pour l’Europe, Presses de Sciences Po.


Présentation de l'éditeur

Since the 1960s, the nature and the future of the European Union have been defined in legal terms. Yet, we are still in need of an explanation as to how this entanglement between law and EU polity-building emerged and how it was maintained over time. While most of the literature offers a disembodied account of European legal integration, Brokering Europe reveals the multifaceted roles Euro-lawyers have played in EU polity, notably beyond the litigation arena. In particular, the book points at select transnational groups of multipositioned legal entrepreneurs which have been in a situation to elevate the role of law in all sorts of EU venues. In doing so, it draws from a new set of intellectual resources (field theory) and empirical strategies only very recently mobilized for the study of the EU. Grounded on an extensive historical investigation, Brokering Europe provides a revised narrative of the 'constitutionalization of Europe'.

• Gives a deeper historical and sociological sense of the role of EU law, which will appeal to lawyers and in particular EU legal scholars
• Suggests a renewed historiography of the role of professional networks, lawyers in particular, in shaping the historical trajectory of EU polity-building
• Offers a new toolbox for social sciences through Pierre Bourdieu's critical sociology (in particular field theory)
•  Antoine Vauchez is a Research Professor at the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, Université Paris 1-Sorbonne/CNRS.

Antoine Vauchez is a Research Professor at the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, Université Paris 1-Sorbonne/CNRS.