The Construction of Public Interest Eu-Orientated European Lawyers

Posted: 17 Jun 2001

Abstract

Since the enactment of the Single European Act and the signature of the Maastricht Treaty, the political-constitutional nature of the EU process has been fully recognized at formal-official level. Such an extraordinary historical and normative event constituted a turning-point for European legal professions, since (not only) their traditional local assets and strategic postionings as legal experts, but (also and above all) their constitutionally established "status activae civitatis" - (i.e. politically active "citizenship") - as boundary-agents between nation-State and civil society has been challenged by wider, eterodirected and top-down (commissarial) EU transpositioning mainstreams.

Among these EU transpositioning mainstreams, the most relevant at present is undoubtedly the process of subsumption of a variety of constitutional issues under the everlasting policy of "defensive modernization" of the self-same EU strukturbildung, as shown by the political urgency to formally define the new constitutional framework by means of a "Charter of Fundamental Rights"(EU Conference, Marseilles, Dec. 2000).

If one considers, in turn, that all the above runs around a political agenda whose main pillar concerns (interior) Order and Justice (since this is just the last piece of the three constitutive elements of EU-State' members' sovereignty) one can easily understand the pivotal importance of the constitutional status-role of European lawyers either as "guardians" or as "engineers" of the overall socio-legal European "ratio juris".

As constitutional changes are about a move from "old" to "new" order concerning any actor and their interests, one might wonder as regards the relationship between European Lawyers and EU constitutional transpositioning;

1) Is there also a "new wave" to re-conceptualize of European lawyers' public interest? 2) If so, what sort of implications should one expect for the technical speciality, cultural identity and political loyalty of a self-claimed (prospective) European public interest lawyer?

Suggested Citation

Olgiati, Vittorio, The Construction of Public Interest Eu-Orientated European Lawyers. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=271757

Vittorio Olgiati (Contact Author)

University of Urbino ( email )

Via Saffi 2
Urbino, Pesaro-Urbino 61029
Italy
0039 722 2670 (Phone)
0039 722 322437 (Fax)

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