The History of the Integration Through Law Project: Creating the Academic Expression of a Constitutional Legal Vision for Europe

Abstract

The history of the “Integration through Law” (ITL) project, conducted by Mauro Cappelletti at the European University Institute in the late 1970s and 1980s, unfolded in this Article, provides clarity on the nature of the power-knowledge nexus in European law, as it pulls the curtain on the close collaboration between academia and the Community institutions in the ITL project. It demonstrates that the ITL was an academic expression of a constitutional vision, which had flourished in the Commission and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for decades, but had never truly been adopted in the emerging academic discipline of European law. Alongside the studies of Eric Stein, the ITL project was the impetus behind the constitutional discourse in academia turning into a paradigm in the 1980s, but the ITL project had an unparalleled impact. Firstly, because of the scholarly environment at the European University Institute (EUI), and secondly, because of the notion of “Integration through Law,” which has proved to be an extremely powerful concept, providing a field of scholars, law professors, civil servants from the Community institutions, and ECJ judges with a flattering self-image and a raison d'être expressed in three little words.