Abstract
‘When I was your age, Pluto was a planet’ was a popular joke after the celestial body’s reclassification as a ‘dwarf planet’. In many ways, the story of Pluto is an appropriate metaphor for the United Kingdom after Brexit. Just as textbooks on astronomy had to be updated to reflect Pluto’s changed status, legal scholarship needs to adapt to the fact that the UK is relegating itself into the outer orbits of the European system of integration and cooperation, yet remains unable to break free from the centre’s gravitational pull. Crucially, the UK has become an object of EU external action, rather than a subject that can manipulate the levers from the inside. This change is also of particular significance for the scholarship of EU external relations. Highlighting, organising, and explaining the changes that Brexit causes for the field and with a view to charting its way forward, this article argues that the UK’s withdrawal will contribute to the further normalisation of EU external relations law as a field of scholarship. Following a brief explanation of why EU external relations law is a doubly peculiar area of scholarship and an overview of the origins and development of EU external relations law as a field, the article elaborates on three main consequences of Brexit for EU external relations law research and explains how each contributes to normalisation: disposing of the most ‘awkward member’, boosting reforms for greater effectiveness, and infusing a sense of geopolitical realism.
Highlights
Abstract ‘When I was your age, Pluto was a planet’ was a popular joke after the celestial body’s reclassification as a ‘dwarf planet’
Following a brief explanation of why EU external relations law is a doubly peculiar area of scholarship and an overview of the origins and development of EU external relations law as a field, the article elaborates on three main consequences of Brexit for EU external relations law research and explains how each contributes to normalisation: disposing of the most ‘awkward member’, boosting reforms for greater effectiveness, and infusing a sense of geopolitical realism
Having as its object of study both a novel legal order and an unusual international actor, EU external relations law has evolved into a vibrant field of scholarship in the course of the past half-century
Summary
‘When I was your age, Pluto was a planet’ was a popular joke for a while after the International Astronomical Union had reclassified Pluto as a ‘dwarf planet’ in 2006.1 More than a decade later, the younger generations have grown up with the idea of Pluto as a relatively small, trans-Neptunian object with a cold and hostile environment trapped in the outer orbit of the Solar System, unable to break free from the centre’s gravitational pull. It is nothing less than a giant cornucopia of new, complex legal questions and extensive materials that provide ample opportunities for exposure (or ‘valorisation’ or ‘impact’ as it is called in different academic assessment frameworks) to the wider public. The UK has become an object of EU external action rather than a subject that can manipulate the levers from the inside This change is significant in the field of EU external relations scholarship, which unsurprisingly has already started to respond to this development as well.[9] By highlighting, organising, and explaining these changes, and with a view to charting the future of this field of scholarship, this article argues that Brexit will contribute to the further normalisation. A conclusion sums up the argument and provides an outlook for the future
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