The legal scholarship of the National Socialist and Fascist period of the 20th century and its subsequent reverberation throughout European law and legal tradition has recently become the focus of intense scholarly discussion. This volume presents theoretical,historical and legal inquiries into the legacy of National Socialism and Fascism written by a group of the leading scholars in this field. Their essays are wide-ranging, covering the reception of National Socialist and Fascist ideologies into legal scholarship; contemporary perceptions of Nazi Law in the Anglo-American world; parallels and differences among authoritarian regimes in the Third Reich, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Vichy-France; how formerly authoritarian countries have dealt with their legal antecedents; continuities and discontinuities in legal thought in private law, public law, labour law, international and European law; and the legal profession's endogenous obedience and the pains of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. The majority of the contributions were first presented at a conference at the EUI in the autumn of 2000, the others in subsequent series of seminars.

The essays comprising this volume are the outcome of a major and unique project which looks in detail at the application of EC law by national courts and the interaction of the demands of EC law with the constraints imposed by national legal orders and, especially, national constitutional orders. The volume comprises seven country studies which are shaped around a common research protocol. These are supplemented by three cross-cutting studies which draw on the country studies as well as on broader contextual research work aimed at trying to understand the role of the European Court of Justice in the round. The results of this multi-national research are certain to provoke widespread interest among scholars of European law, international law and European politics, for they offer the first systematic and rigorous attempt to assess the impact of the ECJ among the leading member states of the European Union.