Connect
About
Jan Zglinski is Associate Professor at LSE Law School. Prior to that, he was Erich Brost Lecturer at the Faculty of Law and St Hilda's College, University of Oxford. Jan studied law in Hamburg, Paris and Oxford and holds a PhD from the European University Institute. He has held visiting positions at Yale Law School and NYU Law School. His research focuses on EU constitutional and internal market law, with a particular interest in empirical methods. He is the author of Europe's Passive Virtues: Deference to National Authorities in EU Free Movement Law (OUP 2020) and editor of Empirical Legal Studies in EU Law (CUP 2026).
Jan has also published extensively on sports law and regulation, covering legal and policy developments in the EU and the UK, including the Independent Football Regulator. He has served as an expert for the Union of European Clubs and FIFPRO, and sits on the Legal Advisory Board of FairSquare's Reboot FIFA campaign. His work is widely cited in international media.
Research
Research Interests
- EU Law
- Internal Market Law
- Sports Law and Regulation
- Empirical Legal Studies
Publications
Empirical Legal Studies in EU Law (Cambridge University Press, 2026), edited with Daniel Naurin and Urška Šadl
Empirical Legal Studies has arrived in EU law. The past decade has seen the publication of pathbreaking quantitative and qualitative studies, the creation of relevant thematic networks, and the realisation of large-scale empirical research projects. This volume explores the new movement. It features contributions penned by legal and political science scholars working or interested in the field. It is part handbook, for which scholars – experts and novices alike – can reach to get an overview of the state of the art. It is part manifesto, showcasing the need for and potential of this fast-growing area of academic inquiry. It is, finally, a critical reflection, assessing the challenges and limitations of Empirical Legal Studies in the EU context, as well as its interaction with adjacent disciplinary and interdisciplinary endeavours. The book captures the significant contribution which empirical legal research has made to the study of EU law and politics, while facilitating a frank exchange about the way forward.
click here for publisher’s site
Europe's Passive Virtues: Deference to National Authorities in EU Free Movement Law (Oxford University Press, 2020)
The European Court of Justice has been celebrated as a central force in the creation and deepening of the EU internal market. Yet, it has also been criticized for engaging in judicial activism, restricting national regulatory autonomy, and taking away the powers of Member State institutions. In recent years, the Court appears to afford greater deference to domestic actors in free movement cases. Europe's Passive Virtues explores the scope of and reasons for this phenomenon. It enquires into the decision-making latitude given to the Member States through two doctrines: the margin of appreciation and decentralized judicial review.
At the heart of the book lies an original empirical study of the European Court's free movement jurisprudence from 1974 to 2013. The analysis examines how frequently and under which circumstances the Court defers to national authorities. The results suggest that free movement law has substantially changed over the past four decades. The Court is leaving a growing range of decisions in the hands of national law-makers and judges, a trend that affects the level of scrutiny applied to Member State action, the division of powers between the European and national judiciary, and ultimately the nature of the internal market. The book argues that these new-found 'passive virtues' are linked to a series of broader political, constitutional, and institutional developments that have taken place in the EU.
- ‘The End of Self-Regulation: Will the Football Governance Act 2025 Fix the National Game?’ 89 Modern Law Review (2026) 628
- 'What Is the Point of Empirical Legal Research on EU Law?' in Naurin, Šadl and Zglinski (eds.), Empirical Legal Studies in EU Law (Cambridge University Press 2026)
- 'Revisiting the asymmetry thesis: negative and positive integration in the EU' (w. M. van den Brink and M. Dawson) (2025) 32 European Journal of Public Policy 209
- 'Alive and Kicking or Barely Alive? The Asymmetry Thesis in the Twenty-First Century EU' (w. M. van den Brink and M. Dawson) (2025) 32 European Journal of Public Policy 2608
- ‘Reforming football: what the EU can do’ (2025) 26 German Law Journal 520
- ‘The European Sports Act: a proposal to improve sports governance through EU legislation’ LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Papers (10/2025) (with Jan Exner and Stephen Weatherill)
- 'Where law meets data: a practical guide to expert coding in legal research' (2025) 3 European Law Open 820 (w. M. Ovádek and P. Schroeder)
- 'Who Owns Football? The Future of Sports Governance and Regulation after European Superleague' (2024) 49 European Law Review 454 (previously published as LSE Legal Studies Working Paper 9/2024)
- 'The Internal Market as a Dynamic Process: Five Scenarios for the Future' in Adams-Prassl et al. (eds.), The Internal Market Ideal: Essays in Honour of Stephen Weatherill (Oxford University Press 2024)
- 'Governing the internal market: from judicial politics to ordinary politics' in Dawson et al. (eds.) Revisiting Judicial Politics in the European Union (Elgar 2024)
- 'The End of Negative Market Integration: 60 Years of Free Movement of Goods Litigation in the EU (1961–2020)' (2024) 31 Journal of European Public Policy 633
- 'Can EU competition law save sports governance?' (2023) 23 International Sports Law Journal 475
- 'The new judicial federalism: the evolving relationship between EU and Member State courts' (2023) European Law Open 345
- 'The UK Internal Market: A Global Outlier?' (2023) 82 Cambridge Law Journal 350
- 'The EU Free Movement of Goods Dataset' (2022) Harvard Dataverse
- 'The Idea of Europe in Football' (2022) 1 European Law Open 286 (with Floris de Witte)
- 'The Principle of Proportionality in EU Law and Its Domestic Application: Ni tout à fait le même, ni tout à fait un autre' (with E. Bjorge), in K. Ziegler, P. Neuvonen and V. Moreno-Lax (eds.), Research Handbook on General Principles of EU Law (Edward Elgar 2022)
- 'Rules, Standards, and the Video Assistant Referee in Football' (2021) 16 Sports, Ethics and Philosophy 3
- 'Contestation and Accommodation: Constitutional and Private Law Pluralism(s) in the EU' in L. De Almeida et al. (eds.), The Transformation of Economic Law – Essays in Honour of Hans-W. Micklitz (Hart 2019) (w. Bosko Tripkovic)
- 'Doing Too Little or Too Much? Private Law Before the European Court of Human Rights' (2018) 37 Yearbook of European Law 98
- Review of Agha (ed.), Human Rights Between Law and Politics: The Margin of Appreciation in Post-National Contexts (2018) 43 European Law Review 977
- 'The Rise of Deference: The Margin of Appreciation and Decentralized Judicial Review in EU Free Movement Law' (2018) 55 Common Market Law Review 1341
- 'Der “Motor der Integration” schaltet einen Gang runter: Die neue Zurückhaltung des Gerichtshofes der Europäischen Union' (2017) for Europe Direct/Info-Point Europa
- 'What Courts Do When They Do What They Do' in H. Micklitz and L. Vicente (eds), Interdisciplinary Research: Are We Asking the Right Questions in Legal Research? (EUI Working Paper 2015/4 2015)
Teaching
Teaching
LL244 Sports: Law and Governance
LL4GG Sports: Law and Governance
LL229 Law of the European Market
LL4EHE Global Sports Law
Engagement and impact
Policy Work
- Laws for The Games: How the EU can reform sports governance (FairSquare 2024)
This policy brief, produced in collaboration with FairSquare, makes the case for an enhanced role for the European Union in the reform of sports governance. It argues that greater public control of sport is needed, with serious and systematic misgovernance at football’s world governing body, FIFA, providing a case in point. The brief lays out the advantages of EU regulation over national and international action, the legal basis for this regulation, the form it could take, and the steps required to make it happen. - Football Governance Bill – written evidence to House of Commons Public Bill Committee (2024)
- European Commission Consultation on 'A Strategic Vision for Sport in Europe: Reinforcing the European Sport Model' (2025)
- Football Ignites The World How Saudi Aramco and FIFA are driving the climate crisis (FairSquare, Fossil Free Football, Reclame Fossielvrij and Badvertising, June 2026)
The report examines how fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship exploit the reach of sport to promote climate-damaging industries, taking FIFA's sponsorship deal with Saudi Aramco as its central case study. It sets out the risks this poses to the climate, explores how FIFA's governance has left it vulnerable to influence from major polluters, and includes legal analysis of how the EU could ban fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship in sport more broadly.
Media Coverage
- European Sports Act: The Independent, Forbes, TV2, Trouw, Fair Observer, Sports Politika.
- European Super League: The Athletic/New York Times.
- Manchester City v Premier League: The Athletic/New York Times.
- Diarra: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Public Engagement
- Union of European Clubs (18 November 2025)
- 'Warum wir ein europäisches Sportgesetz brauchen' [Why We Need a European Sports Act] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (26 June 2025)
- 'Constitutionalising the European Sports Model: The Opinion of Advocate General Rantos in the European Super League Case' LSE EUROPP Blog (16 December 2022)
- 'Die Europäisierung des Fußballs: EU-Recht, Super-League, VAR und die WM in Qatar' UNhörbar Podcast (18 November 2022)
- NTH SPOTLIGHTS: JAN ZGLINSKI | PART A - Rules, Standards & Football— The Nth Cause (9 April 2021)
- 'The rise and fall of the European Super League' EU Law Live (April 2021)
- ‘Goods in the Internal Market Bill: The Emperor’s New Clothes?’EU Relations Law Blog (15 September 2020)
- ‘Europe’s Passive Virtues: Deference to National Authorities in EU Free Movement Law’ Oxford EU Law Discussion Group Blog (7 September 2020)
External Activities
Jan is senior editor, formerly Editor-in-Chief, of the European Journal of Legal Studies. He is a member of the Legal Advisory Board of FairSquare's Reboot FIFA campaign.