Projects

CLOE: Constructing Legal Orders in Europe - The General Principles of EU Law (Jean Monnet Project)

Professor Katja Ziegler (University of Leicester), together with Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax (QMUL) and Dr Päivi Johanna Neuvonen (University of Helsinki) are leading the project "Constructing Legal Orders in Europe: The General Principles of EU Law" co-financed by Erasmus+ funding.

The project is a comprehensive study of existing and emerging General Principles of EU law by scholars from a wide range of expertise in EU law, international law, legal theory and different areas of substantive law from different European and British universities.

The main objective is to better understand GP as a tool for the substantive openness of the EU legal order as well as for cross-fertilization and coherence of legal orders.

The project involves in particular:

• a 2-day international workshop at CELI (University of Leicester) that took place on 29-30 June 2018.
• the publication of a Research Handbook on the General Principles in EU Law by Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming in 2022. Also see Introduction to the Research Handbook on General Principles in EU Law (PDF, 139kb) by Katja S. Ziegler, Päivi J. Neuvonen and Violeta Moreno-Lax.
• practical Guidelines and report for legal practitioners

You can find more information about the project on the European Commission's website.

ILPAN: The International Law and Policy in Africa Network

The International Law and Policy in Africa Network (ILPAN) is an interdisciplinary research network, set up to promote discussion, debate, and collaborative research on African issues.

ILPAN has more than 120 members, located mainly in Europe and Africa, straddling many fields (in particular law, political science, social studies) and occupations (academics, practitioners, NGOs and international institutions personnel).

Find out more by visitingThe International Law and Policy in Africa Network (ILPAN) on Facebook.

Dr Eki Omorogbe of the University of Leicester established ILPAN at the end of 2015, and currently co-chairs the group. Other Leicester staff members of the group include Professor Francois Du Bois, Professor Bernard Ryan, Dr Ben Adodo, and Dr Loveday Hodson, and Dr Troy Lavers.

Research Methodologies of International Law

Dr Rossana Deplano is involved in several projects that look into the potential of empirical (quantitative and qualitative) research methods in international law.

With the goal of furthering the debate into research methods of international law and together with Dr Paolo Vargiu, she SLS organised a workshop on 'Neglected Methodologies of International Law: Empirical, Socio-Legal and Comparative'. This workshop brought together academics from several British and European universities, and was funded by the SLS and the University of Leicester's College Development Fund for research. The findings of this workshop will be compiled in the edited collection: R. Deplano (ed), Pluralising international legal scholarship: the promise and perils of non-doctrinal research methods (Elgar, forthcoming 2019).

Additionally, Dr Rossana Deplano is editing the first ever handbook on research methods of international law: R. Deplano and N. Tsagourias (eds.), Research methods in international law: a handbook (Elgar, forthcoming 2020).

She is currently working on a monograph that will revive the old academic debate about the legal effects of UN General Assembly resolutions using mixed methods. The title of this innovative book is: R. Deplano, Empirical and theoretical perspectives to international law: how states use the UN General Assembly to create international obligations (CUP, forthcoming 2020).

CharterClick

CELI participated in a Europe-wide consortium creating a user-friendly tool to detect violations falling within the scope of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This project was funded by the European Commission.

The CharterClick! project ran from February 2015 to January 2017, and involved 7 universities from different EU member states (including the University of Leicester), an institute specialised in informatics and representatives of victims of fundamental rights violations from 11 Member States.

Professor Katja Ziegler, Director of CELI, led the team of researchers working in this project at the University of Leicester. The project created a toolkit that will assist victims of fundamental rights violations, lawyers, national judges, ombudspersons, equality bodies and other national human rights institutions in determining whether the Charter of Fundamental Rights of European Union can provide protection in a specific case. It also created an extensive database of national case law relating to the Charter as well as a Tutorial on the Charter and Practical Guidelines. The toolkit can be accessed here.

The Leicester unit of CharterClick comprised members of the Centre of European Law and Internationalisation (CELI): Professor Katja Ziegler, Dr Paolo Vargiu, Dr Lisa Rodgers, Ms Aristi Volou, Ms Ewa Zelazna and former Leicester colleague Professors Mark Bell, now Regius Professor at Trinity College Dublin.

CELI hosted two events which introduced and tested the toolkit, an event in London for practitioners in July 2016 and a testing workshop in Leicester in November 2016. The final workshop of CharterClick took place in Dublin on 12 January 2017, where researchers of the University of Leicester presented their findings.

Parties, Parliament and the Brexit Process

This ESRC-funded project combines analysis of the importance of institutions, and legislative and regulatory norms with an examination of the motivations and behaviour of political parties, individual MPs and the government.

Professor Adam Cygan, Dr Philip Lynch and Dr Richard Whitaker lead this project, which analyses how Brexit is reshaping the divisions within and between political parties, impacting upon the strategies adopted by parties and individual MPs, and requiring Parliament to adapt its structures and procedures.

The project has 4 objectives:

• To enhance understanding of how the Brexit vote has affected UK party politics, including divisions within and between parties.
• To develop knowledge of how Parliament responds to Brexit in terms of its structures and procedures, and how effective this response has been.
• To identify those areas of policy that have been most subject to conflict between and within parties and are most likely to change once the UK has left the EU.
• To address the policy priorities of key stakeholders we are working with our impact partner the Industry and Parliament Trust.

Further information available at the project's website.