The Imperative of Mutual Recognition and “Demoicracy” in the EU

Speaker: Professor Kalypso Nicolaïdis (University of Oxford)
Chair: The Rt. Hon. The Lord Mance (The Supreme Court)
Admission: Free
Accreditation: This event is accredited with 1 CPD hour with the SRA and BSB
Series: Current Legal Problems 2016-17

About the lecture

What lessons can we draw from the shift from voice to exits logics throughout the EU culminating in British withdrawal from the EU? At times of profound material and moral uncertainty in the EU, under what banner can this community of others come back together? In answer to this question, commentators often provide a litany of so-called values, variants around the tryptique of liberté, égalité, fraternité. But these are not either uniquely European, nor has the EU seemed particularly apt at serving them.

In this lecture professor Nicolaidis will argue that we can more fruitfully read both the original promise of the XXth century European project and its XXIst century demise through the twin prisms of mutual recognition, altogether a legal norm, a modes of governance and an ethos and demoicracy, pointing to the ambition of “governing together but not as one”. She will combine legal theory, philosophy and ethics to assess the validity and plausability of the recognition promise and discuss the betrayal of what she calls “demoicracy” in the EU.

While legal theorists will be familiar with the contested micro-application of mutual recognition to kir, banks, plumbers, drugs, criminals or refugees,  the lecture will connect these debates with the macro-narratives surrounding the recent political sagas of Grexit and Brexit.

About the speaker

Kalypso Nicolaïdis is Professor of International Relations and director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Oxford. She was previously associate professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She is chair of Southeastern European Studies at Oxford and Council member of the European Council of Foreign Relations.

In 2012-2013, she was Emile Noel-Straus Senior Fellow at NYU Law School (2012-2013). In 2008-2010, she was a member of the Gonzales reflection group on the future of Europe 2030 set up by the European Council. She also served as advisor on European affairs to George Papandreou in the 90s and early 2000s, the Dutch government in 2004, the UK government, the European Parliament, the European Commission, OECD and UNCTAD.

She has published widely on international relations, global governance, trade ethics, law and democracy promotion, as well as the internal and external aspects of European integration in numerous journals including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy and International Organization. Her last books are Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (ed w/ Sebe and Maas, IB Tauris), Normative Power Europe Revisited (ed w/ Whitman, Journal Conflict and Cooperation) and European Stories: Intellectual Debates on Europe in National Context (ed w/ Lacroix, OUP, 2010).  She is a graduate of Sciences-Po (1982) and received her PhD from Harvard in 1993. More information –including publications- can be found on her website:http://kalypsonicolaidis.com/

About Current Legal Problems

The Current Legal Problems annual lecture series was established over sixty years ago. The lectures are public, delivered on a weekly basis and chaired by members of the judiciary.

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) annual volume is published on behalf of UCL Laws by Oxford University Press, and features scholarly articles that offer a critical analysis of important current legal issues.

It covers all areas of legal sponsorship and features a wide range of methodological approaches to law. With its emphasis on contemporary developments, CLP is a major point of reference for legal scholarship.

Find out more about CLP on the Oxford University Press website