Professor Daniela Caruso Named Jean Monnet Chair
Daniela Caruso, long time professor at Boston University School of Law, has been awarded the prestigious Jean Monnet Chair. A teaching post combined with an Erasmus+ grant, the Jean Monnet Chair is offered to highly qualified professors and senior lecturers with a wide experience base and deep focus on European integration studies.
The Jean Monnet project aims to widen the scope of research on EU-related topics, enhance education and teacher training, and prepare future professionals to engage with matters of European integration in the global labor market. The contract for the project runs for three years, during which time European higher education institutions work in tandem with the Jean Monnet awardees and benefit from the chair-holder’s rich expertise in the area of European studies.
Responsibilities as the Chair-holder
In addition to providing at least 90 teaching hours per academic year, as the chair-holder Professor Caruso will conduct several conferences, seminars, and workshops for students and others across disciplines interested in European Union studies.
“Besides reinforcing the ‘law’ dimension of EU studies at BU, both in the School of Law and through interdisciplinary collaboration with students and colleagues of the College of Arts and Sciences,” says Caruso, “by 2018 I aim to complete a research project concerning the distributive effects of trade between Europe and its former African colonies, looking not only at external trade but also at the trade-diverting effects of the EU’s internal market.”
The project, Caruso explains, relates to the present need to coordinate EU and US policies vis-à-vis Africa —hopefully as part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. At a scholarly level, the project aims to bridge trade theory with currently understudied empirical findings. More broadly, it aims to participate in the ongoing debate on global justice, currently characterized by a tension between cosmopolitan aspirations and traditional models of nationally bounded solidarity.
BU’s focus in European Union studies
Daniela Caruso, winner of the Melton Teaching Award at BU Law and twice appointed Harvey Gregory Lecturer on International Organizations at Harvard Law School, is the second professor from BU to have been awarded a Jean Monnet Chair. Vivien A. Schmidt, professor of international relations and political science, was named Jean Monnet professor of European Integration in 2001 and founding director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe in 2011. “Thanks to the masterful example and warm encouragement of Professor Vivien Schmidt, I applied for the Jean Monnet Chair,” says Caruso. “Her high scholarly profile has enabled BU to set up a Center for the Study of Europe (now a part of the Pardee School of Global Studies). The award of the chair allows me to enhance the center’s visibility and to reinforce the ‘law’ aspect of European studies at BU.”
Grant analyst and the center’s assistant director, Elizabeth Amrien, whose efforts since 2002 have been fundamental to strengthening the University’s reach in Europe, further elaborates: “the Center for the Study of Europe builds on the work of the Institute for Human Sciences at Boston University (2002–2009), attracts outstanding visiting scholars, hosts remarkable events, and regularly receives external funding.”
Last October, the Center hosted a TTIP symposium, in which Caruso participated along with fellow EU law scholar Fernanda Nicola. This January, as chair of the European Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools, Caruso convened a panel of renowned legal scholars to address the Refugee Crisis in the Mediterranean—currently the most urgent European problem and a mirror of many flaws in the EU’s design and in global governance. Building on these initiatives, this semester Caruso is convening a Europe and Law speaker series, in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Europe.
Caruso’s projects at BU Law
Well known for her scholarship in contracts, international and comparative law, and with a doctorate in Comparative Law from the University of Florence (Italy), Professor Caruso’s wide experience in European integration studies makes her an apt choice for the chair. She has authored papers that have been published in premier global publications on topics ranging from the implications of European Integration for social legislation to the role of private law in the political transformation of supranational institutions. Caruso has also undertaken several pro bono initiatives around special education law and residential mental health units.
Among other subjects, Professor Caruso teaches a course at BU on European Union Law and conducts a seminar on International Trade Regulation through the Lens of the TTIP. “The ongoing integration of the legal systems of many European states provides us with a number of lessons that can and should inform the most important theoretical debates of our times,” says Caruso. She further explains that when all regulatory controls over the cross-border movement of goods, services, persons, and capital come to be seen as potential obstacles to trade, to be vetted through supranational scrutiny and not just determined by sovereign nations, multiple difficulties arise: the possibility of democratic decision making, the viability of the welfare state, and the very idea of wealth redistribution under the heading of solidarity change meaning and lose much of their traditional substance.
Caruso believes the phenomenon is by no means peculiarly European. Every project of trade integration through internationally binding agreements, including the TTIP and theTrans-Pacific Partnership, foreshadows such difficulties.
“The study of the European experiment—a most elaborate and advanced example of integrated laws and markets—offers a fantastic opportunity to see how far and how deeply globalization is transforming, for better or worse, the way law is carried out,” says Caruso. “It has been a true pleasure, year after year, to focus with my students and through my research on the unfolding of such transformations.”
Further details regarding Professor Caruso’s project activities as the Jean Monnet chair holder can be found on her blog.
Reported by Indira Priyadarshini (COM’16).