European Legal Method Towards a New European Legal Realism?

This book brings together essays by leading legal scholars from a number of European countries on European legal method(s). In Europe there is, and has for some years been, a seemingly renewed debate on methodology in legal research. In the first years of its existence EU law was generally perceived as rather superficial, immature and fragmentary with many gaps and inconsistencies. Now, EU law is ripening and the mutual embeddedness of EU law and the national law of its Member States is becoming more intense. It is therefore both more possible and more necessary to identify and explain the legal method that is applied by European legal actors, in particular legal scholars and courts, when analysing EU law and the law of EU Member States within the scope of application of EU law. This book is the second publication within the European Legal Methods research project and is the result of a conference held in November 2011. Most of the contributors are all legal scholars concerned within d