Constructing a European Society by Jurisdiction

From a sociological point of view, European integration is specifically a process of transforming deeper structures of solidarity, legal order and justice away from the segmentally differentiated European family of nations and towards an emerging European society. This transformation is the subject matter to be explained (explanandum) in this article by a set of mutually supporting explanatory factors (explanans) with the example of jurisdiction by the European Court of Justice: (1) establishing formal legitimate power of European jurisdiction in order to complement and form the driving force of international labour division: preliminary reference, supremacy and direct effect of European law; (2) establishing a substantial conception of control in the field of legal discourse: free movement and non-discrimination; (3) enforcing a genuinely European legal order against national varieties of law by establishing a dominant European legal community; (4) making transnational sense of legal change by legitimating Europeanised law in terms of advancing justice as equality of opportunity across and within nations, as opposed to equality of results within nations accompanied by inequality of opportunity across nations.

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