EU Constitutional Law and Methodology

ended

Jean Monnet Module on “EU Constitutional Law and Methodology” aims to promote at the University of Zagreb, and legal academia more widely, a methodological and a constitutional understanding of EU law and its synergy with European values common to liberal democracies. These objectives will be achieved by introducing into the curriculum of the Zagreb Faculty of Law the first comprehensive and systemic EDUCATION on methodology of EU law at all levels of legal studies - undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate. A methodological course on EU constitutional law will also be offered in postgraduate programme at the Zagreb Faculty of Political Sciences. In its teaching activities, the module will employ and promote a realist outlook to law, facilitating development of students’ critical legal thinking and methodological skillsets, thus contributing to the promotion of studies of “EU law in action” instead of “law in books”. To compliment and continuously improve its teaching activities, the module will support RESEARCH on different methodological approaches to EU law and the constitutional features of EU legal system based on democracy, respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law, ultimately resulting in several research outputs: three ACADEMIC ARTICLES on methodological and constitutional aspects of EU law, and an E-BOOK compiling the module’s teaching materials. The module will in three years organize 9 GUEST LECTURES, a ROUNDTABLE debate and an international CONFERENCE, aiming to improve the quality of its teaching content and research outputs, but also facilitate academic mobility, networking, exchange of knowledge and best practices with international scholars in EU constitutional law and legal theory. In long-term, the module will result in institutionalised education on constitutional nature of the EU and its methodology in the host country, and enhanced academic recognition of using realist and critical legal methods in EU law and EU scholarship.