Law crosses national state borders

The agreement systems of the European Union and the Council of Europe have introduced new norms and statutes alongside national legislation. In addition, the process of Europeanisation affects our concept of justice, derived from national states, on a deeper and more fundamental level as well.

“We propose to study to what degree Europeanisation has led to the conception of justice based on national states becoming obsolete,” says Professor Kaarlo Tuori from the Faculty of Law, the Director of the Centre of Excellence in Foundations of European Law Polity Research.

All the concepts of public law are derived from the national state. Now that justice has turned supranational, we have to consider whether concepts such as citizen and constitution can be talked about on a European level as well, and if so, what is their content.

“If we look at the reformed concept of law from the perspective political community, the unification process is emphasised, if we look at it from the perspective markets, fragmentation is emphasised. Therein lies the tension that according to interpretation is fruitful for research,” says Tuori.

Joint norms bring with them unity but also fragmentation. Earlier, it was possible to understand the legal system as a coherent whole. Now, there are several norm systems: national and international, public and, for example, those belonging to business. Courts of law have lost their monopoly to a variety of arbitration bodies.

The strength of the Centre of Excellence is that this change can be viewed from the perspectives of various fields of law. Social sciences and philosophy are also represented in the Centre. The Centre comprises 27 researchers in three research groups, the first of which focuses on the Europeanisation of law from the perspective of the political community, the second from the perspective of the market economy and the third from the perspective of legal theory.

“As a whole, our aim is to increase cultural self-understanding. Not just in Finland but on a wider scale in Europe as well,” Tuori sums up.

The Centre operates under the auspices of the Faculty of Law at the University of Helsinki, with researchers attached to the Universities of Tampere, Turku, Lapland, and Åbo Akademi in Finland, and the Universities of Bamberg in Germany and Strasbourg in France. Graduate school students included, the Centre has a staff of 27. The Centre also contains a graduate school, launched in 2006.

Centre of Excellence in Foundations of European Law Polity Research

Text: Tiina Männistö
Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
Translation: Valtasana Oy