In the name of the law: a critique of the systemic rationality in EU law

Van de Beeten, Jacob (2024) In the name of the law: a critique of the systemic rationality in EU law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Text - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 28 June 2026. Download (2MB)

Abstract

According to Article 19(1) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ‘shall ensure that in the interpretation and application of the Treaties the law is observed’. This thesis critically examines how the ECJ has exercised this mandate and argues that the ECJ deploys a systemic rationality to discursively construct and sustain the authority of the EU legal order as a rational, complete and self-sufficient whole. Based on this a priori assumption, the ECJ has invented various systemic principles which serve as conceptual building blocks for the EU legal order as a whole. The raison d’être of these principles is not to pursue integrational objectives or articulate a core of rights or values, but rather to construct and protect the legal infrastructure of the EU. They enable the Court to justify the authority of EU law in a selfreferential, formal and functional manner. Despite their importance in the EU legal architecture, this thesis argues that these principles exhibit various weaknesses, which increasingly manifest themselves in light of the various crisis the EU experiences. These principles enable the EU to function, but do not limit the exercise of public authority by EU institutions. The recent turn to EU value constitutionalism amplifies this tension, because the values in article 2 TEU are instrumentalised to preserve, rather than challenge, the systemic nature of EU law. These principles stabilise the EU legal order against internal and external challenges by being highly dynamic in terms of scope, content and meaning. As such, the ECJ’s systemic rationality shows the limits of the judicial construction of the EU rule of law: the foundational principles of EU law must be incoherent for the EU legal order to sustain itself.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Jacob van de Beeten
Library of Congress subject classification:	J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) K Law > K Law (General)
Sets:	Departments > Law
Supervisor:	De Witte, Floris and Wilkinson, Mike
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4665

Actions (login required)

Record administration - authorised staff only