Book contents
9 - Making Sense of Ghostwriters
from Part Five - Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2022
Summary
Chapter 9 proposes a normative and historical evaluation of the book's findings. It first considers how lawyers compare to other ghostwriters of institutional change, suggesting that what distinguishes lawyers is their capacity to wield a mediatory, boundary-blurring agency to seize opportunities for change that may be lost upon actors shackled to single institutional settings. It then addresses the ethics of lawyers’ ghostwriting, submitting that while concealed actions pushing the bounds of the acceptable are often necessary to jump-start institutional change, Euro-lawyering became more normatively problematic as it corporatized and stratified access to transnational justice. Finally, the chapter concludes by taking stock in light of the contemporary challenges plaguing the rule of law in Europe. As a wave of illiberalism and constitutional breakdowns has swept some EU member states, Euro-lawyers have gained a new raison d’être in the struggle to reclaim the elusive liberal promise of the judicial construction of Europe.
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- The GhostwritersLawyers and the Politics behind the Judicial Construction of Europe, pp. 307 - 319Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022