How the law works

• Department of Law

The European Union Law Working Group hosts a workshop with Dimitry Kochenov (CEU) and Morten Broberg (University of Copenhagen).

Abstract:

When lawyers set out to explain why a law is effective, they typically would point to the enforcement mechanisms behind the legal provisions. By contrast, economists, political scientists and behavioral scientists point to a number of other mechanisms that explain why a law is either effective or ineffective. In this workshop, we approach effectiveness from two perspectives. Firstly, we use behavioural science to explain why the very ‘design’ of a legal provision or a legal scheme may significantly affect the actual impact of the provision/the scheme. We will illustrate this point by considering how the EU Member States may choose different legal designs when implementing one and the same. Secondly, the working of EU law is shaped by the framing of the boundaries of EU jurisdiction. It is this boundary, rather that the law itself, which will define effectiveness or the lack thereof: EU law can be very effective in both ignoring the problems and thus ‘working very well’ within the ambit of its own competence, or helping the Member States engage with the problems that are not officially recognised as such. Effectiveness can also be a negative term, breeding lawlessness law. In multi-level systems, the complexity of the constitutional set-up as such could already be a building block of success or failure irrespective of whether the rules inhabiting this complexity would work as designed. We invite the workshop participants to realise that effectiveness and failure in complex multi-layered systems are not on the opposing sides of the spectrum and could walk side-by-side as numerous examples from EU law demonstrate.

The European Union Law Working Group is a forum where EUI members, external researchers, and practitioners working on European Union law discuss their work and interact with other scholars. All interested fellows, PhD researchers, professors and visiting academics are invited to participate.