Eurolegalism

Despite western Europe's traditional disdain for the United States' "adversarial legalism," the European Union is shifting toward a very similar approach to the law, according to Daniel Kelemen. Coining the term "eurolegalism" to describe the hybrid that is now developing in Europe, he shows how the political and organizational realities of the EU make this shift inevitable. The model of regulatory law that had long predominated in western Europe was more informal and cooperative than its American counterpart. It relied less on lawyers, courts, and private enforcement, and more on opaque networks of bureaucrats and other interests that developed and implemented regulatory policies in concert. European regulators chose flexible, informal means of achieving their objectives, and counted on the courts to challenge their decisions only rarely. Regulation through litigation-central to the U.S. model-was largely absent in Europe. But that changed with the advent of the European Union. Kelemen argues that the EU's fragmented institutional structure and the priority it has put on market integration have generated political incentives and functional pressures that have moved EU policymakers to enact detailed, transparent, judicially enforceable rules-often framed as "rights"-and back them with public enforcement litigation as well as enhanced opportunities for private litigation by individuals, interest groups, and firms.

Since the Treaty of the European Union was ratified in 1993, the European Union has become an important factor in an ever-increasing number of regimes of pooled sovereignty. This Handbook seeks to present a valuable guide to this new and unique system in the twenty-first century, allowing readers to obtain a better understanding of the emerging multilevel European governance system that links national polities to Europe and the global community. Adopting a pan-European approach, this Handbook brings together the work of leading international academics to cover a wide range of topics such as: the historical and theoretical background the political systems and institutions of both the EU and its individual member nations political parties and party systems political elites civil society and social movements in European politics the political economy of Europe public administration and policy-making external policies of the EU. This is an invaluable and comprehensive resource for students, scholars, researchers and practitioners of the European Union, European politics and comparative politics.

This insightful book considers the phenomenon of the transformation of enforcement in European economic law while adopting a distinct global perspective. The editors identify and respond to the need for reflection on transformation processes in the area of enforcement by bringing together the leading international and European scholars in a variety of disciplines to share and compare experiences and learning in different areas of law. Rooted in a wide and regulatory understanding of enforcement, this book showcases the transformation of enforcement with reference to both European economic law (especially transnational commercial law, competition law, intellectual property law, consumer law) and to the current context of significant global economic challenges. Comparative perspectives facilitate the formation of a holistic perspective on enforcement that reaches beyond distinct theoretical accounts, political agendas, regulatory systems, institutional patterns, particular remedies, industry sectors, and stakeholder perspectives. As the first comprehensive and comparative analysis of the enforcement of European economic law that reaches beyond closely confined areas of law, it constitutes a crucial contribution to the theoretical and policy questions of how to design a coherent European enforcement architecture in accordance with essential principles and objectives of the EU economic order This unique study will have broad appeal. By exploring enforcement transformations from a legal and a cross-disciplinary perspective, it will be essential reading for scholars, practitioners and policymakers from different disciplines.

While scholarly writing has dealt with the role of law in the process of European integration, so far it has shed little light on the lawyers and communities of lawyers involved in that process. Law has been one of the most thoroughly investigated aspects of the European integration process, and EU law has become a well-established academic discipline, with the emergence more recently of an impressive body of legal and political science literature on 'European law in context'. Yet this field has been dominated by an essentially judicial narrative, focused on the role of the European courts, underestimating in the process the multifaceted roles lawyers and law play in the EU polity, notably the roles they play beyond the litigation arena. This volume seeks to promote a deeper understanding of European law as a social and political phenomenon, presenting a more complete view of the European legal field by looking beyond the courts, and at the same time broadening the scholarly horizon by exploring the ways in which European law is actually made. To do this it describes the roles of the great variety of actors who stand behind legal norms and decisions, bringing together perspectives from various disciplines (law, political science, political sociology and history), to offer a global multi-disciplinary reassessment of the role of 'law' and 'lawyers' in the European integration process.

Across the globe, law in all its variety is becoming more central to politics, public policy, and everyday life. For over four decades, Robert A. Kagan has been a leading scholar of the causes and consequences of the march of law that is characteristic of late 20th and early 21st century governance. In this volume, top sociolegal scholars use Kagan’s concepts and methods to examine the politics of litigation and regulation, both in the United States and around the world. Through studies of civil rights law, tobacco politics, “Eurolegalism,” Russian auto accidents, Australian coal mines, and California prisons, these scholars probe the politics of different forms of law, and the complex path by which “law on the books” shapes social life. Like Kagan’s scholarship, Varieties of Legal Order moves beyond stale debates about litigiousness and overregulation, and invites us to think more imaginatively about how the rise of law and legalism will shape politics and social life in the 21st century.

This book charts the emergence of experimentalist governance in the implementation of EU competition law as a response to uncertainty and the limits of hierarchical enforcement in an increasingly dynamic and heterogeneous economic environment. It contributes to ongoing debates about the current state of EU competition law and provides an innovative account of emergent enforcement trends and its future direction. It also argues that an experimentalist evolution of competition law and market regulation attenuates concerns about the competitive strictures of EU law on national economic and regulatory institutions. Through its focus on experimentalist governance, the book provides guidance on completing experimentalist infrastructures for market regulation, as well as on the role of courts in triggering and sustaining experimentalist solutions. As such, it offers a novel perspective on implementing competition law in the EU and beyond.

This book examines patterns of environmental regulation in the European Union and four federal polities--the United States, Germany, Australia, and Canada. Daniel Kelemen develops a theory of regulatory federalism based on his comparative study, arguing that the greater the fragmentation of power at the federal level, the less discretion is allotted to component states. Kelemen's analysis offers a novel perspective on the EU and demonstrates that the EU already acts as a federal polity in the regulatory arena. In The Rules of Federalism, Kelemen shows that both the structure of the EU's institutions and the control these institutions exert over member states closely resemble the American federal system, with its separation of powers, large number of veto points, and highly detailed, judicially enforceable legislation. In the EU, as in the United States, a high degree of fragmentation in the central government yields a low degree of discretion for member states when it comes to implementing regulatory statutes. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments 1. Regulatory Federalism and the EU 2. Environmental Regulation in the EU 3. Environmental Regulation in the United States 4. Environmental Regulation in Germany 5. Environmental Regulation in Australia and Canada 6. Food and Drug Safety Regulation in the EU 7. Institutional Structure and Regulatory Style Notes References Cases Cited Index R. Daniel Kelemen's The Rules of Federalism is an important contribution to both the literature on federalism and on the European Union. It makes an original theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of regulatory federalism and sheds new light on the federal systems which it compares. It will open up new avenues of inquiry. --Alberta Sbragia, University of Pittsburgh The Rules of Federalism makes a significant contribution to the literature on regulatory federalism. Keleman's original theoretical perspective is made plausible through a series of fascinating case studies. The book will be of interest to scholars of federalism, constitutional design, environmental policy, and the European Union. --Susan Rose-Ackerman, Yale Law School

The Neoliberal Republic traces the corrosive effects of the revolving door between public service and private enrichment on the French state and its ability to govern and regulate the private sector. Casting a piercing light on this circulation of influence among corporate lawyers and others in the French power elite, Antoine Vauchez and Pierre France analyze how this dynamic, a feature of all Western democracies, has developed in concert with the rise of neoliberalism over the past three decades. Based on interviews with dozens of public officials in France and a unique biographical database of more than 200 civil-servants-turned-corporate-lawyers, The Neoliberal Republic explores how the always-blurred boundary between public service and private interests has been critically compromised, enabling the transformation of the regulatory state into either an ineffectual bystander or an active collaborator in the privatization of public welfare. The cumulative effect of these developments, the authors reveal, undermines democratic citizenship and the capacity to imagine the public good.