Social Pathology in EU law: CELS Seminar

Speaker: Dr Ana Bobić, Hertie School, Berlin

Abstract: The European Union exhibits a fundamental ambiguity: it strives to be a political community that delivers to its citizens freedom, equality, and other values in Article 2 TEU, but on closer inspection, the emancipation it promotes is grounded predominantly in market rationality. In other words, the EU seeks to build a socio-political community, but its means of doing so remain contingent upon their economic contribution of those living in its territory. The Member States too are an important part of this story: they contribute to the creation of such laws and insist on being the primary sites of reproducing political membership and identity. The aim of this talk is to uncover what the EU takes itself to be as a polity (a political community of values) and analysing the contradictions that arise from how it puts these claims into practice.

To do so, I use the concept of social pathology developed in social theory. A social pathology may be defined as a dysfunctionality that is the result of a social dynamic – a self-reproducing nexus of collective practices – that, apart from its connection to injustice, diminishes the good (or impedes the ends) of those who participate in those practices. A social pathology is more than just a breach of the law, an injustice to an individual, or even structural injustice: it is a self-perpetuating dynamic that is difficult to break from. The focus is thus not actions of individuals or specific judgments and decisions, but the relationship between law and broader social practices and institutions. This novel approach allows us to see how EU and national law jointly and over time stratify humans into hierarchies based on economic merit, contrary to its proclaimed values of freedom and equality. Juxtaposing the EU’s value claims with social reality will allow us to see the broader distribution of privileges and burdens among the people living in the EU’s territory.

Biography: Ana Bobić is a Senior Researcher at the Hertie School, member of the Editorial Board of the Common Market Law Review, and currently a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute. Her research is on the EU’s constitutional theory, judicial interactions in the EU, the constitutional implications of the EMU, and the philosophical aspects of belonging in the EU. Ana is the author of two books, The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict in the EU (OUP 2022) and The Individual in the Economic and Monetary Union. A Study of Legal Accountability (CUP 2024).

For more information see:

https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/weekly-seminar-series