Solitude, community, and critique. Motives for a reshaping of EU Legal Studies

EU Legal Studies are having a tough time. They traditionally found themselves in a role of support and consolidation of the integration process. They had the task of shaping a program for Europe and of establishing a stable and resistant barrier against the risk of political disintegration. Accordingly, the European Union and its law form a “structured, organized and finalized whole.” This conception is no longer tenable. It has exhausted its legal, political and social impetus. The Union has not lost its law but it seems to have lost law as a vector of dynamism and cohesion. We are witnessing a “critical turn” in contemporary EU Legal Studies. This should result in a worrying question for European jurists today about the form that can be given to a collective experience such as European integration.