1 - From Methodological Shifts to EU Law’s Embeddedness

Summary

The article provides a general introduction to the book. It introduces the readers to the new strand of empirical and interdisciplinary scholarship that has emerged over the past decade in the study of the EU law, lawyers and the Court of Justice of the European Union. Taking stock of the on-going ‘methodological turn’ in this field, it presents the new interdisciplinary research strategies and empirical material mobilized to analyze the Court of Justice of the European Union. Altogether, the twelve case-studies cut away from the top-down approach to the EU law and the CJEU, and allow for a more localized and fine-grained observation of the socio-legal actors and practices actors involved in CJEU case law. As the introduction moves beyond mainstream legal scholarship and ‘grand narratives’ of legal integration, the edited volume provides a more historically informed and sociologically grounded account of the EU law’s (unequal) embeddedness in Europe’s economies et societies.