CELS Lunchtime Seminar: 'The History of European Union Law - Constitutional Practice, 1950 to 1993'

Speaker: Professor Morten Rasmussen, University of Copenhagen 

Biography: Morten Rasmussen is Associate Professor at the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen and a leading expert on the legal histories of European integration and the League of Nations. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics. The most recent publication is a general history of early period of European Union Law from 1950 to 1993. He is currently co-editing a Cambridge Handbook of the League of Nations and international law.

Abstract: Professor Rasmussen will present on his forthcoming publication 'The History of European Union Law - Constitutional Practice, 1950 to 1993'.  The formative period of EU law witnessed an intense struggle over the emergence of a constitutional practice. While the supranational institutions, including the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament, as well as EU law academics helped to develop and promote the constitutional practice, member state governments and judiciaries were generally reluctant to embrace it. The struggle resulted in an uneasy stalemate in which the constitutional practice was allowed to influence the doctrines, shape and functioning of the European legal order that now underpins the EU, but a majority of member state governments rejected European constitutionalism as the legitimating principle of the new EU formed on basis of the Treaty of Maastricht (1992). The lecture traces the struggle and accounts for eventual stalemate over the constitutional practice and the fragile and partial system of rule of law that exists in the EU today.

Please note: this event is a hybrid event - it will take place in person in the Cambridge Law Faculty. For those who are unable to make it in person, please register to attend via Zoom.