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Paper short abstract:

This panel contribution underlines the need to integrate different disciplinary approaches and methodologies - between law, legal history, environmental history (and studies), social and political history, and illustrates this drawing on the history of European Union environmental law.

Paper long abstract:

This panel contribution draws on my research on the history of the emergence of the environmental law of the European Union. In this context, I constantly encounter, how processes primarily of law making (and to some extent also of legal interpretation) are driven by not only, and perhaps not primarily, by legal logics. In fact, (national and European) political and administrative logics and economic concerns are of the greatest importance, and legal aspects often appear as just arguments in the larger political game. Moreover, environmental law-making does not necessary focus primarily on what is what is most urgent or necessary “to save the earth” or clean up the environment. Which problems of the environment become the object of attention, whether and to what extent they become subject to “legal solutions” is strongly contingent on those various other logics and concerns – that involve power, too. Importantly, how different aspects of the environment are perceived and which "solutions" are suggested, is defined by and negotiated among different experts – scientists, but also economists and lawyers, drawing on preexisting legal prescriptions, definitions and precedents. Thus, methodologically speaking, to disentangle the different processes at play in the making and development of European environmental law – changing and integrating disciplinary perspectives and insights is indispensable.