Book Discussion: Peter Lindseth’s Power and Legitimacy: Reconciling Europe and the Nation-State

We’re pleased this week to host a discussion of Peter Lindseth’s new book, Power and Legitimacy: Reconciling Europe and the Nation-State (OUP 2010).  Peter is Olimpiad S. Ioffe Professor of International and Comparative Law at the University of Connecticut Law School.  Among other honors, Peter he has been a fellow and visiting professor in the Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) Program at Princeton University; a visiting fellow (Stipendiat) at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, Germany; as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies as well as a lecturer at the Academy of European Law, both at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy.  The book weaves a textured analysis of the Europe’s institutional futures:

A succession of crises has marked the last decade of European integration, leading to disorientation among integration scholars. Older frameworks for understanding have been challenged, while the outlines of new ones are only now beginning to emerge. This book looks to history to provide a more durable explanation of the nature and legitimacy of European governance going forward. Through detailed examination of certain fundamental but often overlooked elements in EU history, Peter Lindseth describes the convergence of European integration around the ‘postwar constitutional settlement of administrative governance.’

We’ll be joined for the roundtable by Francesca Bignami (George Washington University Law School); Fernanda Nicola (American University Washington College of Law); and our own Ken Anderson.  We’ll look forward to a stimulating discussion of Peter’s important new book.