HistEu meets the authors: ELO Special Issue "Rethinking European Legal Integration: Legal text from a bottom-up perspective"

Rethinking European legal integration: legal text from a bottom-up perspective and the functioning of European law, 1957–2000, edited by Brigitte Leucht, Mala Loth, and Magnus Esmark, is a special issue of European Law Open (2025) which explores a new way of understanding and researching the creation of European law from a bottom-up perspective.

The contributions to the special issue all start from a legal text and traces how different societal actors have mobilised European law for a number of reasons, often unrelated to ideological preferences for European integration. Rather, they have used European law to translate a range of political issues into legal questions. The contributions cover many different types of actors and their use of European law, from pot-smoking hippies over Italian communists to a French bridge-builder.

The methodology followed in the special issue contributes to the development of new ways of engaging with the creation of European law from a bottom-up perspective, as well as to a more inclusive notion of European law than just the law of the European Union. Members of the research field 'Legal History of the European Union' invite all those interested to discuss the contributions of the special issue and further perspectives within this area of research with the editors, Brigitte Leucht (University of Portsmouth), Mala Loth (Arena Centre for European Studies), and Magnus Esmark (University of Oslo).​