Everson, Michelle; Joerges, Christian --- "Re-Conceptualising Europeanisation as a Public Law of Collisions: Comitology, Agencies and Interactive Public Adjudication" [2006] ELECD 286; in Hofmann, C.H. Herwig; Türk, H. Alexander (eds), "EU Administrative Governance" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: EU Administrative Governance

Editor(s): Hofmann, C.H. Herwig; Türk, H. Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845422851

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Re-Conceptualising Europeanisation as a Public Law of Collisions: Comitology, Agencies and Interactive Public Adjudication

Author(s): Everson, Michelle; Joerges, Christian

Number of pages: 29

Extract:

15. Re-conceptualising Europeanisation
as a public law of collisions:
comitology, agencies and an
interactive public adjudication
Michelle Everson and Christian Joerges

INTRODUCTION: BRINGING THE PAST TO BEAR

The notion that European law is a law sui generis is one so often uttered
that it could now be considered a simple truism, a phrase with universal
validity, but no immediate explanatory power beyond its own self-referential
replication of the stated origins of European law outside the law of the
state and outside the normal international legal framework (law of states).
After all, no restatement of the unique nature of European law, however
forceful, can hope to overcome fundamental problems posed by, say, the
Bundesverfassungsgericht in its own assertion of the equal validity of a
German constitutional order.1 This, nonetheless, is not wholly fair to the
appellation: the sui generis conception of European Law does have meaning,
at least to the degree that its origins outside statal frameworks explain its
peculiar operations, its recourse to `supremacy rather than sovereignty'.
However, a certain critique must be allowed of the `unique European legal
conception', above all where it creates artificial barriers between current
European legal thinking and a heritage of western legal theory and
conceptualisation that might prove to be of greater explanatory worth in
relation to radical European legal constructions than a simple, and sometimes
regressive (in effects at least) assumption that any curious European legal
phenomenon is explained by quick reference to its `uniqueness'.
`Bringing the past to bear' ...