For more than three decades, the Academy of European Law (AEL) at the European University Institute (EUI) has brought together scholars, practitioners, and researchers from around the world to engage with some of the most pressing legal challenges of our time.
The 2026 edition continued this tradition, welcoming around 100 participants from more than 30 countries across five continents. The programme also reinforced its commitment to inclusion and widening participation, hosting 15 Erasmus+ participants and 10 participants through the EUI's Widening Europe Programme.
Each June, the Academy's renowned summer courses create a unique environment where leading experts, EUI researchers, and legal practitioners come together for intensive learning, critical debate, and professional exchange. Over the years, these courses have become a distinctive feature of the EUI's academic offering and an important meeting point for the global legal community.
Established in 1990 by Professors Antonio Cassese and Joseph H. H. Weiler, the Academy is a free-standing unit within the EUI Law Department. While rooted in European law, its mission extends equally to human rights and international law, fostering critical reflection and intellectual exchange across legal disciplines and geographical boundaries.
This year's programme featured two specialised summer courses: the EU Law Summer Course on Social Conflict and EU Law and the Human Rights Summer Course on Imagining Planetary Legal Orders. Together, they examined how law responds to profound social, political, environmental, and global transformations, encouraging participants to engage critically with emerging developments in law and governance.
Social conflict and the future of Europe
The EU Law Summer Course explored the relationship between social conflict and European Union law, examining how EU law shapes, responds to, and is itself transformed by societal tensions and change.
As course convenors Gráinne de Búrca and Joanne Scott explain: "This year's EU law summer courses combine a set of stimulating and critical lectures from a stellar line-up of emerging and established scholars. The specialised thematic courses focus on social conflicts and EU law, examining how EU law both contributes to and shapes as well as responds to such conflicts; while the general course reflects on the ways in which the EU is emerging from a decade and a half of 'crisis' and is seeking to reconstitute itself in response to internal and external challenges."
The programme also welcomed distinguished scholars from around the world, including Professor Katerina Linos, Michael Heyman Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at Berkeley Law School. Her participation exemplifies the Academy's enduring impact: having attended the AEL summer course as a young researcher nearly twenty years ago, she returned in 2026 to deliver the general course 'From Brexit to Breakthrough: The European Union's Unlikely Renaissance'.
"More than 20 years ago, I first came to the Academy as a student, and was impressed both by EUI and by the European project," shared Katerina Linos. "It is wonderful to return now, to share my ideas about how the European Union has come so much closer together, and to get so much feedback from students, faculty, and visitors from all over the world. I hope to keep coming back to this wonderful institution for many years to come."
Imagining planetary legal orders
The Human Rights Summer Course, Imagining Planetary Legal Orders, invited participants to think beyond traditional state-centred approaches to law and governance. Bringing together participants from 15 countries and speakers from across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the programme fostered dialogue across legal traditions and regions. Through innovative and interdisciplinary teaching methods, participants explored how legal frameworks might evolve to address global challenges in an increasingly interconnected world.
Course convener Arnulf Becker Lorca reflected: "In an era of profound ecological and climate crises, we interrogate the limits of conventional international environmental law and institutions, examining approaches that challenge the traditional anthropocentric framework: rights of nature, post-human legalities, international law and geography, and Earth-system perspectives. Drawing upon the contributions of participants from India, Uganda, Sweden, China, Colombia, Iceland, Brazil, Honduras, Ukraine, Jamaica, among others, we imagine planetary legal orders in which conventional doctrines and concepts are reconfigured to bring together human and more-than-human beings."
Beyond the classroom: Building global legal communities
One of the Academy's greatest strengths lies in the enduring communities and professional networks it helps create. Among the participants in the 2026 programme was a scholar attending the Academy's summer courses for the seventh time. Having first joined as a doctoral researcher, Dimitri Debord described the Academy as a formative influence on his academic and professional development:
"These courses successively allowed me to discover my professional path, refine the focus of my research, and understand the meaning of law. This was made possible by the high quality of instruction provided by the speakers combined with the relevance of the participants' contributions. Furthermore, the inclusion of a practical component in the training demonstrates the exceptional pedagogical expertise in the essential symbiosis between teaching and its practical application. As an international lawyer and researcher, I remain fascinated by the expertise gained through these courses. At any level of study or career, there is something to learn here for everyone."
His experience illustrates how the summer courses continue to support scholars at every stage of their careers.
Looking ahead: A tradition of excellence for a changing world
The 2026 summer courses once again demonstrated the Academy of European Law's distinctive contribution to legal education: combining academic excellence, international diversity, intellectual innovation, and meaningful opportunities for professional development. As legal systems confront increasingly complex challenge - from social conflict within Europe to questions of global governance and planetary justice - the Academy remains a vital forum for critical reflection, scholarly exchange, and the cultivation of future leaders in European, human rights, and international law.