Academic

Smits on Citizen Participation in the EU Integration Process

By Lawrence Solum

Jan M. Smits (Maastricht University Faculty of Law - Maastricht European Private Law Institute) has posted Beyond Euroscepticism: On the Choice of Legal Regimes as Empowerment of Citizens (Utrecht Law Review, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This contribution aims to show that Euroscepticism is based on a particular view of how citizens' interests are represented in the European Union. This view should be replaced with a different type of thinking about ensuring citizens' participation in the European integration process. In this alternative view, the possibility of citizens choosing legal regimes other than their 'own' (and States being explicit about the limits of exercising such an enhanced party autonomy) is seen as a method of empowering citizens in fields that matter to them the most. Typically, these fields relate to (but are not limited to) what is known as 'private law', the law that deals with how private parties can shape their own private, professional and business lives.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on November 24, 2010 (boomark / email).