European, Comparative & Transnational Research Hub Seminar - Forgotten Visions: Imagining the nature of EU law in the formative period of European legal integration

LSE has a long tradition as the home of the world’s leading scholars in the areas of European, Comparative and Transnational Law. Our key interests lie in critically examining the interaction between different jurisdictions, with special attention to the social, economic and political implications of transnational regulation. Our expertise includes EU law, ECHR law, environmental law, private international law, transnational law and comparative law.

On Tuesday 1 December 2026, Jacob van de Beeten (Copenhagen) will present on the following topic: Forgotten Visions: Imagining the nature of EU law in the formative period of European legal integration.

What is EU law? For many the answer to this question is self-evident and even trivial, namely a 'new legal order' that is different from both national and international law. That is also the answer that the Court of Justice gave when it issued its foundational judgment in Van Gend en Loos (1962) and Costa v ENEL (1964). Yet what today appears as a natural truth, used to be a contingent and contested. In this presentation, I present my new research project that seeks to provide the first intellectual history of the formative period of European Union law. Combining legal and historical methods, this project examines the various legal imaginaries that existed in academic and professional circles before the European Court of Justice authoritatively defined the nature of the Treaty of Rome. In doing so, this project highlights how the choices made by the Court of Justice in the formative period contained specific blind spots and institutional path dependencies that continue to shape EU law to this day. By retrieving these ‘forgotten visions’ my aim is to provides a new understanding of EU law’s intellectual development and critically reflect on the use of history in contemporary EU legal discourse.

This seminar is open to the public and will operate on a first-come, first-served basis.

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