Changing the way we teach EU Law: Teaching EU Law as an integral part of one's national legal order (Teaching EU Law)

Grunddaten zu diesem Projekt

Beschreibung

The project aims to change the way we teach EU law: We propose measures to teach EU law as an integral part of the national legal order. This is an innovative approach as it overcomes the German tradition of academic curricula for legal studies to teach EU law only as another peripheral field at a later stage of study. By continuing with this classical approach, students would necessarily perceive EU law as an irritant in relation to their long-established national legal order, which could lead to an attitude of defensiveness against such influences. However, the modern reality of European integration is at odds with such approaches, which run the risk of marginalising European influences and the important role that EU law now plays in the legal order of its Member States. Against this background, the way in which we teach EU law is of paramount importance in shaping the way in which our students perceive EU law: as a threat to a self-contained legal system, as the classical approach does, or as an integral part of the legal system itself, as our approach does. Therefore, the core element of our approach is to include the basics of EU law and EU constitutional law in the regular constitutional law lectures for first year students and the basics of EU administrative law in the regular administrative law lectures for second year students. An important second element of our proposal is the creation of specific small courses in which students from different European backgrounds meet (also from the beginning of their law studies) in order to identify EU law as their common ground for all legal communication and further legal studies. Thirdly, we propose a special series of lectures by practitioners, politicians, etc., in which they highlight the important role that EU law plays in their field of action today - addressed not only to students but also to interested members of civil society.