Realism about Legal Integration: Outline of a Nuanced Legal Realist Approach

Arthur Dyevre 

Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Law
February 22, 2013

Abstract:      
I sketch out an approach to legal integration in Europe that can be characterised as “Nuanced Legal Realism”. Nuanced Legal Realism neither assumes the complete indeterminacy of legal rules, nor the existence of a single right answer in all and every case, but views law as one potential constraint among the many factors shaping judicial behaviour. While contrasting this approach with mainstream perspectives on legal integration, I show how it might help us get a better grasp of the incentives, constraints and causal relations at work in the legal integration process.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 24

Keywords: European Union, legal integration, legal realism, legal theory, courts, law and politics, judicial behaviour

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2222599