New seminar of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence ‘Reinforcing the Rule of Law and EU Values’
SEMINAR DESCRIPTION
This seminar is offered in English to third-year law students who have taken the mandatory second- year course on European Public Law, and is equally open to all exchange students and students of other disciplines.
The seminar analyses central topics of EU law by using a more interactive and practical approach than the one used in standard lectures in a full classroom.
The seminar will be held to a smaller, international group of students and will focus on deciphering the methods of development of EU judge-made law, its dynamics and constant progress, exploring the use of methods of legal interpretation and the objectives thereby pursued, and in particular the use of values that increasingly underpin judicial developments of the law.
The seminar will aim to explain basic concepts of EU law by placing them in a jurisprudential setting, often unknown to students of purely positivistic educational background, which is common in continental legal traditions. The seminar will therefore enhance students’ understanding of how the case law of the Court of Justice develops using various legal methodologies, such as textual, contextual or teleological interpretation, and will particularly explore the use of values in judicial decisionmaking. A special emphasis will also be placed on the relevance of general principles of law, and the principle of proportionality in particular, to fill the interpretative voids left by the legal text or to balance out the conflicting constitutional values of equal rank and thus solve constitutional conflicts.
The classes will be interactive, based on the discussions of lecturers and students. The materials for each class will be published in advance on the eLearning site, together with a list of questions around which the debate will be conducted. Students will be obliged to prepare in advance and to be ready to discuss the questions indicated in the materials.
TIMING
winter semester 2025/2026
classes will start in October 2025, exact timing TBC
LECTURER
doc.dr.sc.Nika Bačić Selanec, LL.M. (UMich)
email: nika.bacic@pravo.hr
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
1) Seminar paper – 70% of the grade
2) Regular attendance and class participation – 30% of the grade
Students will be required to prepare for each class in advance by reading the assigned materials available at the course e-learning site.
The course is based on a Socratic method. Students will be expected to prepare for class and participate in class discussions, which may influence their final grade.
TEACHING UNITS (examples):
1. Introduction: A Critical Analysis of Judge-Made Law
2. A “New Legal Order” in a Comparative Common Law Perspective
3. Teleological Interpretation and Its Limits: Understanding the Genesis of Direct Effect of EU
Law
4. The Use of General Principles of EU Law 5. How to Apply Directives in Horizontal Situations: Distorting the Sources of Law or Pursuing the Value of Equality?
6. Textual v. Teleological Interpretation: Analysing Novel Developments in CJEU Case-Law
7. A Dual Role of Proportionality in EU Judge-Made Law
8. Balancing Constitutional Values: Economic Freedoms v. Fundamental Rights
9. The Rule of Law in the EU and the Role of Values
10. How to Construct a “Hypothesis” and Write a Well-Argued Seminar Paper?
