Law, Conflict and Transformation: Debating European Law and Policy with Christian Joerges' scholarship

European law is at a critical turning moment, both internally within the Union and externally with respect to its place in the world. Following major global and EU crises and conflicts, the place of the EU and its law becomes increasingly debated, contested and reconfigured. This may be a good moment to reflect, revisit and debate the fundamental theoretical concepts that have shaped the discourse around EU law, to investigate their legacy and their relevance and validity for today’s changing legal and policy landscape. This symposium centres on Christian Joerges’s work on conflicts-law constitutionalism, recently compiled in the book ‘Conflict and Transformation’. Our aim is to spark discussion on the critical notions and concepts that shaped a pivotal period in European law and to explore how they might contribute to current debates about the role of the EU, Europe, and its legal and policy frameworks both internally and in the global setting.

The contributions are taking two distinct perspectives. First, they explore what is the intellectual, political and legal legacy of the theoretical approach imagining European laws as conflict of laws, and how this conceptual apparatus can and should be used to understand current conflicts within the EU. Second, how can conflicts-law constitutionalism help understand the future and, specifically, the role of the EU in an ever-more differentiated and fragmented world in which conflicts play a central role?