Page:ELO 1(1), 126–130. On legal geography as an analytical toolbox for eu legal studies.pdf/1

European Law Open (2022), 1, 126–130 doi:10.1017/elo.2022.3 DIALOGUE AND DEBATE: SYMPOSIUM ON LEGAL GEOGRAPHY AND EU LAW

Maria Persdotter$1*$ and Andrea Iossa$2$


 * Abstract

1. Introduction

This is a joint reply to Floris de Witte article, included in the present issue of European Law Open. We were very pleased to read de Witte contribution. It was about time that someone ventured into the uncharted lands of imaginary dragons and proposed a research agenda for legal geography in European Union (EU) legal studies! De Witte article is remarkably clear, comprehensive, and free from the type of conceptual excesses that mark many current debates on space and time. De Witte describes in straightforward terms what it means to ‘think spatially’ and why it is useful to do so in order to understand the workings of EU law ‘on the ground’. In particular, de Witte identifies several concrete areas and developments in the EU legal order that both reveal the intertwined relationship between EU law and its spatial ‘context’, and that call for a legal geographic analysis, such as the changing status and role of city authorities in EU law.

As de Witte so expertly explains, legal geography is a truly interdisciplinary approach, concerned with the mutually constitutive relationship between law, space and, increasingly also, time. These relationships are intensely concrete. The geography of both ‘natural’ and social life is thoroughly structured by law. Conversely, law is embedded in social and political processes, and