The Ghostwriters
Lawyers and the Politics behind the Judicial Construction of Europe

The Ghostwriters unmasks how lawyers catalyse policy change across borders by encouraging deliberate law-breaking and mobilizing courts against their own governments.

Tommaso Pavone (Author)

9781009074988, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 November 2022

389 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

'The Ghostwriters is a profoundly revisionist, deeply researched, and beautifully written account of how a far-flung collection of 'Euro-lawyers' pioneered and powered the development of European Union law. In it, Tommaso Pavone confronts and falsifies the 'founding myth' of a European legal process driven by rights-conscious litigants and activist judges, marshalling a mountain of diverse evidence to chronicle how private lawyers prodded reluctant national judges to engage with the European Court of Justice and construct the rule of European law. Theoretically creative, methodologically rigorous, and compulsively readable, it is the most important book on European legal integration in decades.' Mark Pollack, Professor of Political Science and Law and Jean Monnet Chair, Temple University

The European Union is often depicted as a cradle of judicial activism and a polity built by courts. Tommaso Pavone shows how this judge-centric narrative conceals a crucial arena for political action. Beneath the radar, Europe's political development unfolded as a struggle between judges who resisted European law and lawyers who pushed them to embrace change. Under the sheepskin of rights-conscious litigants and activist courts, these “Euro-lawyers” sought clients willing to break state laws conflicting with European law, lobbied national judges to uphold European rules, and propelled them to submit noncompliance cases to the European Union's supreme court – the European Court of Justice – by ghostwriting their referrals. By shadowing lawyers who encourage deliberate law-breaking and mobilize courts against their own governments, The Ghostwriters overturns the conventional wisdom regarding the judicial construction of Europe and illuminates how the politics of lawyers can profoundly impact institutional change and transnational governance.

Part I. Introduction
1. The politics of ghostwriting lawyers
Part II. Judges and resistance to change
2. Revisiting judicial empowerment in Europe
3. Renouncing power and resisting change
4. The limits of rebellion
Part III. Lawyers and the uneven push for change
5. The first Euro-Lawyers and the invention of a repertoire
6. Hot spots and cold spots
Part IV. Lawyers and the rise of contentious politics
7. Euro-Lawyering goes public
8. Euro-Lawyering goes silent
Part V. Conclusion
9. Making sense of ghostwriters.

Subject Areas: International organisations & institutions [LBBU], Law [L], International relations [JPS]