expensive. In a digital environment, however, cost is a far less compelling motive. But just having the possibility of letting go of it so does not necessarily mean we should do so. There is a school of thought that holds that the word limit has now been internalised by scholars to such a degree that it is no longer felt as a constraint: we think our thoughts, plan our papers, and tailor our analysis in the mould of 8-10 thousand words.
We deliberately invite long, long submissions. We do so for two reasons. The first is an empirical assumption, and we will be proven right or wrong soon enough: we think that there are authors out there that submit to the tyranny of the word limit under protest and yearn to be liberated from its shackles. The second is normative, and impossible to verify (or falsify): we suspect the word limit may well have something to do with the state of European legal scholarship. To be clear, lots of excellent and important work has been done in 8-10 thousand words. But it is a format that lends itself to some types of analysis more than others. It certainly does not encourage the intellectually ambitious, theoretically informed work that we hope to attract and that is so clearly lacking in the field. With this longer format we simply wish to create a space where word limits are not a constraint on ideas.
The first group of such ‘core analysis’ articles makes the point beautifully. It also showcases the type of ‘issue driven’ scholarship we want to welcome on our pages. In European Public Law after Empires, Signe Larsen explores the heritage of imperialism in EU public law. In Exporting Peace: The EU Mediator’s Normative Backpack, Sarah Nouwen problematises the baggage of eurocentrism in the EU’s peace mediation across the world. With these two articles, we make clear that we cannot read European law and action but in the light of, or at least not separate from, their ‘darker legacies.’
We demonstrate our other ambitions in the other two core analyses. Päivi Neuvonen, in A Way of Critique: What Can EU Law Scholars Learn from Critical Theory?, explores the role of critical theory in providing a more robust theoretical and methodological framework for the critique of EU law. Martijn van den Brink’s When Can Religious Employers Discriminate? The Scope of the Religious Ethos Exemption in EU Law is a fine example of excellent doctrinal scholarship put in its broader social and normative context.
Next to the ‘core analyses’, the journal’s short section – ‘dialogue and debate’ (between 3 to 8 thousand words) – is mostly directed at giving space to debates on European law, exploring different theoretical and methodological directions that European law has taken and should take, or taking stock of particular current issues. It will thus host symposia on specific themes, also, where pertinent, in conversation with a core analysis. It will also provide compelling engagement with current books or revisit classics that have shaped how we think of Europe and its law.
In this issue, the symposium on geographies of EU law is our first effort to put unusual topics on the pages of ELO. We hope that the readers will enjoy this insightful and playful set of interventions around Floris de Witte’s elegant center piece that discuss how geographies shape, or should shape, the way we think about the EU. Still in the short section, we host a symposium on Michael Wilkinson’s book on Authoritarian Liberalism. This is one of the
interpretations of EU constitutional law that has emerged recently, challenging existing established views, and justifies a discussion on its arguments that may or not make us look differently at EU law. In our book section, Carol Harlow revisits Francis Snyder’s New Directions in European Community Law, and, with it, the beginnings of the law-in-context turn in EU law. At a time in which new critical views on EU law are emerging, Neil Walker writes on The Challenge of Inter-Legality, edited by Jan Klabbers and Gianluigi Palombella, and takes it as a starting point to engage with the theoretical value of proposing yet another way of thinking about the global legal landscape.
