Raising the Spectre of Scepticism

Abstract

Scepticism is a dirty word in European studies, legal or any other. The so-called ‘Euro-sceptic’ is pigeon-holed, castigated and marginalised. As Joseph Weiler has recently observed, in European studies, the ‘moral high ground’ seems to be ‘occupied fairly safely by the integrationists’ (Weiler, 1991b, p. 427). Perhaps this is why there is so little critical commentary in European studies, and European legal studies in particular. In legal circles, the idea of Europe is a given. The absence of a sceptical, or even a critical, voice in European legal studies should be a cause for concern. Yet the absence hardly seems to register. Despite the obvious absence of any normative order, save for a raw economic one, ironically European law has emerged as the bastion, perhaps the only remaining bastion, of unchallenged and unrequited legal formalism. In this introductory chapter, and throughout this book, I want to invigorate the sceptical voice. In doing so I am consciously echoing a wider sceptical movement in legal studies, which has characterised the critical edge of legal theory during the past two decades. It is now a commonplace in critical legal studies to emphasise the contextual nature of law (cf. Hunt, 1993).KeywordsNormative OrderLegal StudyMaastricht TreatyEuropean IdentityCritical Legal StudyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.