LAU44102 Advanced EU Law

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, students should be able to:

• Identify and understand core EU law structures
• Analyze, breakdown, and interpret primary EU law materials
• Create independent authoritative argument and exposition on the basis of primary materials
• Conduct effective and targeted research in EU primary materials
• Learn complimentary learning techniques
• Orient oneself through EU materials
• Grasp how the structures, principles, institutions, and substantive law mesh together
• Gain confidence in lawyering in EU materials
• Improve targeted legal writing

Module Learning Aims

The point is to cover primary materials in some depth, to learn how to work with primary materials, to see in operation fundamental structures of EU law, and EU – Member State institutional interaction, and how it all meshes together. It is part training in being an EU lawyer and part an exploration in a concrete contexts of themes in EU constitutionalism, notably federalism. None of this is done in the abstract. It is done with a substantive focus on primary materials in EU competition
law, the most federal of EU law areas, the Treaties and some core doctrines. Competition law is the vehicle and focus to show systemic nature of EU constitutionalism and how EU law “thinks”. This course does not cover competition law in a way similar to Economic and Legal Aspects of Competition Policy and students need no prior acquaintance with competition law, nor will students with prior competition law experience be doubling up. Independent thinking based on rational argument from close reading of primary materials is encouraged and prized, as is making connections between different primary instruments, and instruments at different levels (Treaties and Regulations, for example).

Module Content

Learning. Students must have with them prescribed (freely available) primary materials such as the treaties. Advance reading is required. The information is in the primary materials and students aim for understanding and self-organisation of the knowledge in them. Almost all material is posted on Blackboard. Regular (not absolute) class attendance and advance reading is required and a roll call may be made. Certain short research and writing exercises may also be assigned throughout the semester, to assist student learning. These are not corrected, they are to direct your engagement with the materials and practice how you might approach the essays or exam. It is not possible to cram successfully for this course at the end of the semester without having done the reading in advance of class and attended regularly. There are no lecture notes in the sense of the transfer of information.

Consider your own experiences, on the one hand, of the difference between text books, cases and materials books, reading cases themselves, and reading statutes, and on the other of attending programmatic power point lectures with notes transferring an academic’s road map of a substantive area, and a seminar on a text. This course is closer, from the point of view of student preparation, to reading statutes, and from the point of view of presentation in class, to seminars on texts.

In broad approximation, students who take this course (a) report a somewhat higher work load and difficulty during the semester, and (b) achieve somewhat higher results, than in other classes on average.

Recommended Reading List

EU Treaties, core primary Regulations, Directives, and Commission Notices on Blackboard, some EU case law