The first two parts of the book provide, with extensive references, an in-depth legal analysis of a wide range of topics pertaining to:
- the distribution between the EC and the Member States of norm-setting authority in their external relations, i.e. the rules that determine what the EC and the Member States can do (individually or together) in international relations; and
- the reception and application of rules of international law within the Community area, including the way in which international law enters Community law.
In the third part of the book, the author develops and applies a theoretical and methodological framework inspired by discourse analysis. This novel approach is used to identify and describe some of the most significant legal discourses in EC external relations. This part of the book provides - from an orthodox lawyer's perspective - an accessible account of a number of theoretical and analytical issues, including:
- the social construction of law and legal reasoning, the role of discourses in this construction;
- basic building blocks for a discourse analysis in law; and
- how to integrate discourse analysis and discourse analytical insights into an orthodox legal analysis with a view to bring out the restraints and possibilities in various strands of legal reasoning and legal meaning configurations.
From a number of new perspectives, the study analyzes some of the most central and durable legal doctrines in EC external relations law, and shows how the construction of these doctrines affects the future development of this area of law. In this way, the book provides new knowledge about topics that continue to be at the heart of debatesconcerning the EU's external dimension.