Europe Reconstructed

Date01 March 2012
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2011.00900.x
Published date01 March 2012
REVIEW ARTICLE
Europe Reconstructed
Anne Orford*
Daniel Kelemen,Eurolegalism:The Transformation of Law and Regulation in
the European Union, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011, 378 pp, hb
£36.95.
In the intellectual and political ferment of 1940s Europe, planning for post-war
reconstruction was a site of intense ideological struggle. Competing visions of
the rule of law, the theory of the state and the limits of government, long the
province of philosophers, jurists, political leaders and revolutionaries, were taken
up by economists and government agencies concerned with the restructuring of
European war economies and the development of former colonies. For many if
not most scholars and policy-makers at the time, the reconstruction of Europe
was synonymous with its integration.
Long before the Second World War had come to an end, many of Europe’s
most innovative thinkers had gone to work on the task of envisaging what the
post-war project of reconstruction and integration should entail.Franz Neumann,
Herbert Marcuse and their band of émigré intellectuals were busy developing
proposals for the American approach to German reconstruction from their posts
at the Research and Analysis Branch of the newly created Office of Strategic
Services in Washington.1Their recommendations for addressing the‘fundamental
antagonism between “ruling” and “ruled groups”’ included eliminating the
influence of industrialists on the state, the re-establishment of the freedom to
organise,land reform,and the democratisation of political and economic organi-
sations.2Dag Hammarskjöld, who a decade later would decisively shape the
management of decolonisation as the second Secretary-General of the United
Nations,3was bringing his conservative economic orientation to bear on
Sweden’s plans for post-war Europe, pushing to prioritise price stability and the
protection of government bond-holders as policy goals.4Hammarskjöld’s
approach to economic planning was challenged by the great Stockholm School
*Michael D Kirby Professor of International Law and Australian Research Council Future Fellow,
Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.
1 B. M. Katz, Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942–1945
(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989).
2 P. Marquardt-Bigman, ‘Behemoth revisited: The research and analysis branch of the office of
strategic services in the debate of US policies towards Germany,1943–46’ (1997) 12 Intelligence and
National Security 91, 93.
3 A. Orford, International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,2011)
42–108.
4 B. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld (New York:WW Norton, 1994) 22–3; Ö.Appelqvist, ‘Civil Servant or
Politician? Dag Hammarskjöld’s Role in Swedish Government Policy in the Forties’ (2005) 3
Economic Review 33.
© 2012The Author.The Modern Law Review © 2012 The Modern Law ReviewLimited. (2012) 75(2) MLR 275–286
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX42DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,MA 02148, USA

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