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The Legal Community: Judges, Lawyers, Officials and Clerks in the Writing of Europe
Author(s) -
Schepel Harm,
Wesseling Rein
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
european law journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1468-0386
pISSN - 1351-5993
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0386.00025
Subject(s) - autonomy , legal profession , empirical legal studies , law , legal realism , politics , political science , legal research , legal writing , sociology , sociology of law , legal opinion , comparative law , private law , black letter law
This article argues that EU legal studies whould pay more attention to the legal discourse that sustains the conceptions of law and legal politics underlying European law. Drawing loosely on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘legal fields’, it offers a social and intellectual reconstruction of European legal thinking by way of empirical analysis of European legal writing. The article argues that the autonomy, technicality and specificity of European law should be seen at least in part as consequences of the social and professional structure of the community of EU laywers.