LL4BG Half Unit
Rethinking EU Law
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Professor Floris De Witte
Availability
This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Law and Finance and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
How to apply: Priority will be given initially to LLM, MSc Regulation and MSc Law and Finance students on a first-come-first-served allocation.
Spaces permitting, requests from all other students will be processed on the same first-come-first-served allocation from 10am on Thursday 2 October 2025
By submitting an application, students are confirming that they meet any pre-requisites specified. Providing an additional written statement will not aid a student's chances of being accepted onto a course, and statements are not read.
Deadline for application: Not applicable
For queries contact: Law.llm@lse.ac.uk
This course is capped at 30 students. Students must apply through Graduate Course Choice on LSEforYou.
For the LLM (Specialisms: European Law, Public Law, Human Rights Law)
Requisites
Additional requisites:
Basic knowledge (at an undergraduate level) of EU institutions, EU law or European integration is useful but not required.
Course content
The course offers a critical re-examination of some of the central themes in EU legal studies. It consists of two parts. In the first part, we will explore how to think about European integration – in its colonial, economic, social, and cultural dimensions, and what the role of law may be in this process. It analyses different methodological commitments in exploring these questions, and asks how the role of law has changed as the EU itself is facing new challenges. Is the ‘point’ of the EU to protect certain values or to articulate changing political preferences? How are the EU’s history and future imagined in today’s legal norms?
The second part of the course applies what we’ve learned and explores a number of different dimensions of European integration. We will analyse and re-think how EU law is both an instrument that creates European integration, but also something that comes with specific economic, social and cultural assumptions. The areas that we will explore will be taken from the following range: animal rights, geographical indication protection rules, LGBTQ+ rights, student mobility, over-tourism in the EU, equality law, and the legislation on the EU’s ‘strategic autonomy’.
Teaching
20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.
Formative assessment
All students are expected to produce one 1,500 word formative essay during the course.
Indicative reading
Azoulai, ‘The Law of European Society’ (2022) 59 CMLR 203.
Van den Brink, Dawson, Zglinski, ‘Revisiting the asymmetry thesis: negative and positive integration in the EU’ (2024) JEPP.
Kramer, ‘Airbnb, the City and the Drive for European Legal Integration’ (2024) 3 ELO (forthcoming).
Neuvonen, “A way of critique: What can EU legal scholars learn from critical theory?” (2022) European Law Open.
Panasci, ‘Unravelling Next Generation EU as a Transformative Moment: From Market Integration to Redistribution (2024) 61 CMLR 13.
Von Bogdandy, ‘The Emergence of European Society through Public Law’ (OUP 2024).
De Witte, ‘Where the Wild Things Are: Animal Autonomy in EU Law’ (2023) 60 CMLR 391
Assessment
Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period
Key facts
Department: LSE Law School
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 14
Average class size 2024/25: 14
Controlled access 2024/25: NoCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
For this course, please see the following link/s:
LL4BG Rethinking EU Law Course guide Video https://youtu.be/rjib-GFiGYU