Interpretive twists, argumentative turns, and new reference frames: unpacking the jurisprudential shift in the European citizenship jurisprudence

Scholars have over the past years identified a blurring of lines, a U-turn, a generational shift, a new cycle, and even the emergence of a new reactionary phase in the European citizenship jurisprudence. The analyses, which focused mostly but not exclusively on the rights of economically non active migrants, suggested first, that the Court has become increasingly willing to protect Member State finances at the expense of free movement rights of European citizens. Second, the so called jurisprudential shift was the product of rights curbing interpretations and not of explicit legislative amendments. In other words, it was mediated by the Court. Professor Šadl in her study aims to unpack the jurisprudential shift as a process of Court driven or Court mediated legal change. She systematically investigates judgments and opinions of the Advocates General, which concern the rights of economically non active European citizens as well as cases, related to these cases by precedent citations. More concretely, the examination focuses on: (1) The changes in the use of the teleological method of interpretation of relevant Treaty articles and Directive 2004/38, including the so called autonomous concepts, (2) The alterations in references to past decisions, such as the replacement of the foundational jurisprudence with newer and rights limiting precedents, and (3) An increased reliance on the policy argument of unreasonable burden on public finances, taking the form of a so called slippery slope argument. Professor Šadl highlights and explains the logic of court induced legal change, and demonstrates how in the area of European citizenship several judicial mechanisms reinforced each other, culminating in a legal U-turn.

Urška Šadl comes from Slovenia, and holds a BA degree in law from the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, a LLM degree in European legal studies from the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium, and a PhD in law from the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where she was first Assistant and then Associate professor of European Constitutional law. She has completed longer research stays at King's College, London, Institute of European and Comparative Law at the University of Oxford and most recently visited the University of Michigan as Michigan Grotius Research Scholar. Her research appears i.a. in the European Law Journal, the European Law Review, the European Journal of Legal Studies and the European Constitutional Law Review. She is currently a professor of law at the European University Institute in Florence. In her first year of law studies in Ljubljana Urška contracted a courts and jurisprudence bug and never completely got over it. Her research examines various tools and techniques that enable courts to make and change law via case-law and maintain their interpretive authority in the long run. Her main focus is the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

A sandwich lunch will be available from 12.30.