Together with the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, the Academy of European Law organized a bilingual and interdisciplinary workshop, in September 2008, on 'The European Legal Field'.
The workshop was convened by Bruno De Witte (Professor of European law and Co-director of the Academy) and Antoine Vauchez (Marie Curie Fellow at the EUI).
The notion of 'field', drawn from the sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu, indicates the variegated set of specialized groups, professions and institutions that practise European law and thereby contribute to its development.
The notion of a 'European legal field' thus seeks to broaden the scope of what is generally studied in the discipline of European law by comparing and contrasting the insights of lawyers, political scientists and sociologists.
As a first result, a number of papers presented at the workshop have been published as EUI Working Papers.