EC Law: Text, Cases and Materials

The study of EC law is clearly of central and growing importance within the UK and beyond. A knowledge of EC law is essential within courses on constitutional and administrative law while many substantive law subjects, from competition law to discrimination law, are increasingly affected by developments in Europe. While there are a numebr of texts dealing both with the instituional and substantive law of the EC, this has not been matched by the production of good, general casebooks on the subject. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive and wide-ranging case book on EC law which may also serves as a prime textbook, embracing all major aspects of EC law, of both an institutional and substantive nature. The flexible structure of the book makes it suitable for use in a variety of EC courses, whether the emphasis is on the institutional law of the Community, or on certain substantive aspects thereof. It may be used as a primary textbook in the study of a given subject or as a supplement to an existing text as well.
Making use of the full range of the available literature, including case law, Treaty provisions and subsequent legislation, while also drawing upon relevant secondary literature from legal periodicals and the writings of political scientists, economists and other scholars who have studied the EC, the student is provided with a body of material both vast in scope and thorough in detail. Up-to-date documentation emanating from the organs of the Community is included as well, even where this does not take the form of completed legislation, in order to heighten the student's understanding and awareness of the most current dynamics of policymaking in the EC.
Textual explanations and evaluations of the many differing areas of EC law are related by the authors in detail, facilitating the use of the book as a primary text while enabling students to comprehend particular topics even where the book is used as an accompaniment to an existing text. Throughout the exegetical and interpretive sections of the text, the underlying theme that the EC must be related to the overall development of the Community as a whole is explored in a variety of ways within the discussion of the institutional and substantive law of the EC.

Grainne de Burca is a Lecturer in Law in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College.