The revolutionary doctrines of European law and the legal philosophy of Robert Lecourt

Abstract

The creation of today’s European legal order is usually traced back to a set of remarkable decisions made by the European Court of Justice in 1963 and 1964. Where, however, did the content of those judgments come from? After all, the doctrines advanced by the Court in its Van Gend en Loos, Costa v. ENEL, and Dairy Products decisions were not set out in the Treaty of Rome itself. This paper uses writings by French judge Robert Lecourt to show how the legal philosophy that Lecourt had developed before his appointment to the Court, in his scholarship on French property law, can be directly related to the fundamental doctrines that the Court created after his appointment, indicating that one of the major objectives of the dominant faction on the Court in 1963 and 1964 was a comprehensive rejection of any form of reciprocal or retaliatory self-help between the European states.