Weimer calls this the epistemic power of law: European law governs society by asserting to know it. It determines what counts as a risk, and who may speak about it – experts, companies, certifiers – and who is silent. Unlike literary fiction, such as a novel, law does not present these constructions as imagined. They look like descriptions of reality, and are therefore hard to contest. That is a democratic problem, at a time of deregulation and pressure on the rule of law.

Weimer studies, at the intersection of law, the humanities and the social sciences, how European law knows the world, and where that knowledge remains contestable.

Prof. Maria Weimer, professor of European Studies, with a focus on EU Law in the Humanities: How European Law Knows the World: Epistemic Power and Democratic Contestation.

You can watch this inaugural lecture here.