Prerequisite: None

Exam Type: Any Day Take-Home

This course examines the legal order of the European Union and its institutions, with particular focus on their capacity to respond to geopolitical challenges that the project of European integration is facing in the twenty-first century.

Since the end of World War II, an increasing number of European states have been engaged in one of the most innovative experiments in government in the modern world. Seemingly willing to relinquish some of the sovereignty they had so fiercely fought to defend during much of their history, these states have set in place supranational legal, institutional and political mechanisms aimed at integrating their economic and political systems. To an important extent, that effort has been successful. The EU is today the largest trading block in the world and it remains, in many ways, a laboratory of institutional and political experimentation. At the same time, the Union is facing profound crises, some thought not all of its own making. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is testing the very foundations of EU integration and is forcing a revival of long-shelves projects for a European common military. The policies of the second Trump administration are adding to the tremendous pressure on the EU to reposition itself on the global stage. That pressure is all the greater after Brexit demonstrated that the process of European integration is not unidirectional. Meanwhile, the forces of authoritarian populism remain at work in the EU. Democratic erosion not only in Central and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia) but across the EU poses deep challenges to EU constitutional doctrines, which were created in the context of a common market but now have to withstand authoritarian pressure on the structures of EU member states. Like the financial and refugee crisis more than a decade ago, these new challenges, alongside climate change, the broader energy independence crisis, migration, the transformations of the knowledge economy and AI are testing the adequacy of the EU institutional structure. The interplay between national and supranational legal orders remains under intense scrutiny and in need of theorizing. The stakes for the EU and the world economic and political structures could not be higher. Law is at the center of these debates, now as in the previous stages of European integration. This is an exciting time to study EU law.

Our exploration of EU law will be structured in five parts. Part I invites reflection on the radicalism of the project of supranational integration through law in historical perspective. Part II offers an overview of the EU’s institutional framework with particular attention to various reform projects aimed at enhancing the democratic nature of Europe’s supranational institutions and giving the EU a voice on the global stage. Part III offers an in-depth study of the foundations of European constitutionalism, specifically the structural interplay between the European legal order and the national legal systems of Member States, including issues of enforcement. Part IV introduces the cycles of doctrinal transformation in the substantive law of the EU (trade, labor, citizenship). Part V discusses current existential challenges to the project of European integration.

All students are welcome, including those with some previous exposure to the subject matter. Students who have questions about the course should feel free to email the instructor at vperju@law.harvard.edu.