The Law of the European Union, Volume 1

This work invites readers in law, as well as those in political science, international relations, and similar disciplines to witness the fast growing emergence of a "new legal order": the law of the European Union (EU) and European Communities. Ever since its early founding through daring steps in the 1950s, Community law has gone through formidable and complex developments resulting from several enlargements and the expansion of the powers of the Communities. For reasons laid out in this book, the EU as a whole is now a field of major interest and study.

This volume deals mostly with issues pertaining to the sovereignty of the member states engaged in the construction of Europe. After presenting a history of the Communities and EU, Levasseur and Scott address topics such as the EU's constitutional principles, its institutions, the sources of law, the legal remedies available, and the relationship between Community law and national legal orders. Comparative law references have been added where appropriate. In addition, this work examines the EU's defense policies and the special relations between the EU and the USA.

"We certainly find in [the book] all the qualities of an excellent casebook, where the goal of providing a mass of information does not give way to the goal of stimulating classroom discussion; the goal is always to prefer thought over a mere dogmatic exposition and that, in itself, should earn this book a very large audience, even outside strictly academic circles." — Xavier Blanc-Jouvan, American Journal of Comparative Law, 2002

"The Levasseur work…does the far superior job of conveying the constitutional and institutional structure of the European Union and the very complex jurisdiction of the courts… What the Levasseur book lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. The Levasseur book is absolutely the better suited to a three-hour (one semester) course or to independent study by practitioners in the field. This much more understandable work uses a European approach to a European subject, while still including an appropriate number of cases as part of the overall presentation." — On Studying European Law, A Comparative Review of the Two Leading Books, The Tulane European and Civil Law Forum, 2003