The book takes stock of the on-going 'methodological turn' in the field of EU law scholarship. Introducing a new generation of scholars of the European Court of Justice from law, history, sociology, political science and linguistics, it provides a set of novel interdisciplinary research strategies and empirical materials for the study of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The twelve case studies included challenge the usual top-down approach to EU law and the CJEU and instead suggest a more localized and fine-grained observation of the socio-legal actors and practices involved in the making of CJEU case-law. Moving beyond mainstream legal scholarship and the established 'grand narratives' of legal integration, the volume provides a more historically-informed and sociologically-grounded account of the EU law's uneven embeddedness in Europe's economies and societies.

Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union, this book offers 'thick' descriptions, contextual histories and critical narratives engaging with leading or minor personalities involved behind the scenes of each case. The contributions depart from the notion that EU law and its history should be narrated in a linear and incremental way to show instead that law evolves in a contingent and not determinate manner. The book shows that the effects of judge-made law remain relatively indeterminate and each case can be retold through different contextual narratives, and shows the commitment of the European legal elites to the experience of legal reasoning. The idea to cluster the stories around prominent cases is not to be fully comprehensive, but to re-focus the scholarship and teaching of EU law by moving beyond the black letter and unravel the lawyering techniques to achieve policy results.