Author Meets Critics: "Brokering Europe. Euro-Lawyers and the Making of a Transnational Polity" By Antoine Vauchez (Cambridge University Press 2015)

This panel will discuss Antoine Vauchez' forthcoming book "Brokering Europe. Euro-Lawyers and the Making of a Transnational Polity" (CUP, 2015). While most of the literature on European law offers a disembodied account of European legal integration, Brokering Europe reveals the multifaceted roles Euro-lawyers have played in EU polity, notably beyond the litigation arena. In particular, the book points at select transnational groups of multipositioned legal entrepreneurs which have been in a situation to elevate the role of law in all sorts of EU venues. In doing so, it draws from a new set of intellectual resources (field theory) and empirical strategies only very recently mobilized for the study of the EU. Grounded on an extensive historical investigation, Brokering Europe provides a revised narrative of the 'constitutionalization of Europe'