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Legal Order, Legal Pluralism, Fundamental Principles. Europe and Its Law in Three Concepts
Author(s) -
Itzcovich Giulio
Publication year - 2012
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/j.1468-0386.2012.00604.x
Subject(s) - legal pluralism , empirical legal studies , legal realism , law , legal profession , legal culture , political science , philosophy of law , legal research , comparative law , legal science , legal formalism , normative , sociology , private law , black letter law
The essay analyses the way in which the concepts of legal order, legal pluralism and fundamental rights have been used to describe (and decide) what European integration is (and what it ought to be) from the perspective of the law. The essay does not provide a legal theory but limits itself to investigating how certain concepts have been employed to justify legal decisions and to construct legal theories. The juridical discourse on Europe is examined to identify some trends in contemporary legal culture: the decline of a tradition of legal thought, ‘legal dogmatics,’ the vanishing of the distinction between internal and external law (between domestic law and international law, and between positive law and morality), the growing importance of fundamental rights discourse, the centrality of balancing test, the widespread criticism of legal science's claim to neutrality and the consequent normative turn affecting legal scholarship.