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How can the law of the European Union be most effectively taught in the face of the EU's current upheavals? With this new book a team of specialists provide a comprehensive survey of EU law, placing it in its social, political and economic contexts. The book's innovative approach, coupled with a stimulating and accessible writing style, allows the student to engage fully with the material. The book charts the development of the European Union from its inception to the present day by exploring in detail the EU's institutions, its law-making, its administrative processes and its substantive law. Crucially, it incorporates recent key developments, such as the crisis over the Constitutional Treaty and the consequences of its apparent 'failure', as well as issues arising from an enlarged Europe. With cases and materials integrated throughout the text and recommended reading sections accompanying each chapter, this is essential reading for all European law students at undergraduate or postgraduate level.

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The book sets out to examine some of the key features of what we describe as the paradox of constitutionalism: whether those who have the authority to make a constitution - the 'constituent power' - can do so without effectively surrendering that authority to the institutional sites of power 'constituted' by the constitutional form they enact. In particular, is the constituent power exhausted in the single constitutive act or does it retain a presence, acting as a critical check on the constitutional operating system and/or an alternative source of authority to be invoked in moments of crisis? These questions have been debated both in different national contexts and at the level of constitutional theory, and these debates are acknowledged and developed in the first two sections of the book.

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In this thought-provoking book thirteen outstanding authorities from various EU jurisdictions examine the legal basis of self-regulation and its function in the process of European legal integration, with particular reference to European private law.

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This is a book about the ever more complex legal networks of transnational economic governance structures and their legitimacy problems. It takes up the challenge of the editors' earlier pioneering works which have called for more cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary analyses by scholars of international law, European and international economic law, private international law, international relations theory and social philosophy to examine the interdependences of multilevel governance in transnational economic, social, environmental and legal relations. Two complementary strands of theorising are expounded. One argues that globalisation and the universal recognition of human rights are transforming the intergovernmental "society of states" into a cosmopolitan community of citizens which requires more effective constitutional safeguards for protecting human rights and consumer welfare in the national and international governance and legal regulation of international trade. The second emphasises the dependence of the functioning of international markets and liberal trade on governance arrangements which respond credibly to safety and environmental concerns of consumers, traders, political and non-governmental actors. Enquiries into the generation of international standards and empirical analyses of legalization and judizialisation practices form part of this agenda.

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Discusses how the regulation of genetically modified (GM) food and feed by the European Food Safety Authority reveals the mediation which occurs between the politics of hazard and the politics of anxiety. Outlines the legal framework governing the marketing of such food and reflects on the operation of the politics of genetic hazard in relation to three GM products.

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The strength of participation in its political processes has increasingly become the yardstick against which the legitimacy of the European Union is measured. Yet experiments in deliberative and participatory democracy suggest that their practice invariably falls short of their lofty ideals. A reason is their failure to consider the process of communication itself. As understanding of communication is constituted through a number of surrounding communicative contexts, communication, per se, can never be said to be good or bad. More important is a constitutional framework for communication which provides the contexts—performative, institutional and epistemic—that enable communication to contribute to particular, desirable ideals. This piece will argue that a deliberative approach to European governance involves a process of justification in which the three practical tasks of the European Union—polity-building, problem-solving and the negotiation of political community—are debated and resolved around the four values that have underpinned the development of politics as a productive process—those of transformation, validity, relationality and self-government. The organisational reform required for this involves a wide-ranging revisiting of the structures of the European polity.

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The European Food Safety Authority marks a new stage in European Union governance. It has no direct regulatory powers, but is entrusted with developing norms of food safety, which are to inform the material content of EC food law. The hope is that its independence and expertise will restore popular confidence both in the EU and in the food we eat. The irreducible nature of lay-expert conflicts about hazard suggests that a more likely scenario is that such disputes become recast as opposition to EC law. Such conflict is most likely to manifest itself in national courts through challenges to or non-compliance with EC law. The current principles for resolution of such conflicts are hopelessly outmoded. The article, therefore, argues for a constitutional resettlement, which sets out principles germane to the nature of the EC regime, namely that of a multi-level regulatory State. It argues for a new defence of regulatory balance. Individuals could argue for the disapplication of EC norms where these violated a valued local regime which had given consideration to the issues raised in the EC legislation and whose positive value to its subjects exceeded its negative impact on the interests protected by the EC legislation.

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This set of essays provides and important contribution to the debate about the role of human rights law in combating racism. The first essay examines the right to equality in the context of racism, drawing on a wide range of international and comparative sources to create a critical framework of analysis. The second essay locates the discussion within the context of multi-culturalism, ethnicity, and group rights, with specific reference to ethnicity within Europe. The next set of essays is concerned with international istruments to address racism, followed by a critical examination of the newly developed race discrimination directive at EU level. The particular problem of race hatred on the internet is examined in the seventh chapter, followed by an important discussion of enforcement and remedial structures.

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Post-nationalism is suggestive of a number of transformations in the practice of both law and politics. In the case of politics, it implies an assertion of the salience of the organization of scale, time, and individual subjectivity in the practice of politics, yet a corresponding acknowledgement that traditional administrative structures have lost their hegemony over organization of these phenomena. In the case of law, it implies a legal pluralism caused in part by administrative differentiation, but also brought about an increase in the number and types of organization that have private 'law-making' capacities. These processes are particular disruptive for the modern constitution, which has traditionally been identified as a central instrument in the recognition, co-ordination, interaction, and self-legitimation of law and politics. This begs the question as to what processes are carrying out tasks that have traditionally been associated with the modern constitution. This essay argues that the fluidity and complexity of these processes entail that they must lie in the processes of interaction themselves. In particular, it argues that the central 'constitutional substitute' is the individual act of recognizing organizations as having political and legal attributes. For the process of recognition contains two structures which serve to organize and legitimize interaction. Any act of 'constitutional' recognition requires, first, a process of prior evaluation on the part of the observer that requires the organization to justify itself to the observer. The according of recognition, by contrast, entails that the observer respect the organization as having the autonomy to impose and represent itself politically. This respect allow the organization to order legal and political life.

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