Dr Floris De Witte

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law and LLB in Laws. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

It is recommended that this course is taken in the second year of the LLB.

The EU is central to all of the most pressing challenges that we face: migration, environment, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rule-of-law backsliding, AI regulation. It is the biggest and most ambitious experiment with governance beyond the state.

This course focuses on how the EU works, and how it has navigated the tension between, on the one hand, the commitment to ‘do things together’, solve collective problems by cooperation and the creation of institutions beyond the state, and, on the other hand, the desire for domestic self-rule, national interests and political identities. It covers the basic institutional, constitutional, and substantive discussions that animate EU law and that influence the EU-UK relationship. It covers the EU law aspects of the GLD and SQE.

Teaching and learning activities will include lecture elements as well as facilitated synchronous discussions and problem solving. In addition, peer-to-peer elements such as small-group work will be employed. The module will follow the Universal Design for Learning philosophy to create an inclusive learning environment. Adjustments will be made for students with disabilities and learning difficulties. Slides and class questions will be posted in advance.

At the end of the course you will be able to critically and independently assess both the legal structure of the EU as well as the political and social context within which it operates.

Topics include:

• Understanding EU Law

• Institutions and Law-Making

• Democracy

• Legal Order

• Judicial System

• Internal Market

• Free Movement of Persons

• Values

• Brexit I: Institutions and Differentiation

• Brexit II: Substantive dimension

This course will have a minimum of three hours of teaching content each week in Autumn Term in the form of a two-hour lecture (every week) and an one-hour class. This course includes a Reading Week in Weeks 6 of Autumn Term. Essays will be set around reading week to allow students to dedicate time to writing skills.

Students will be expected to produce one essay of 1,500 words in the Autumn Term.

- Dawson & De Witte, EU Law and Governance (CUP 2022).

- K. Hayward, 'Flexible and Imaginative: The EU's Accommodation of Northern Ireland in the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement' (2021) 58 International Studies 201.

- Pavone & Keleman, ‘The Evolving Judicial Politics of European Integration: The European Court of Justice and national courts revisited’ (2019) ELJ.

- Roederer-Rynning and Greenwood, ‘Black boxes and open secrets: trilogues as ‘politicised diplomacy’ (2021) 44 West European Politics 485.

- V. Perju, ‘Against Bidimensional Supremacy in EU Constitutionalism’ (2020) GLJ 1007.

Dawson & De Witte, EU Law and Government (CUP 2022). In addition, the course uses a broad

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.