University of Aarhus 2005
Law is mainly in Danish
Internationalisation represents a challenge to university teaching in various ways. Jens Hartig Danielsen, Professor of European Union Law and International Law at the University of Aarhus, stresses the special role jurisprudence plays as an interface between Denmark and the surrounding world.
By Jakob Kehlet
From a legal point of view, it was no catastrophe that the EU Constitutional Treaty failed to be adopted in 2005. The part of the treaty that dealt with fundamental rights is best described as legal bungling, whereas other parts of the treaty were definite improvements. This is the point of view of Professor Danielsen, who was appointed the first Professor of EU Law and International Law at the University of Aarhus in 2005.
One of the advantages of the new treaty was that it would have made the legal system in the EU considerably more transparent.
“When lecturing in EU Law today, my starting point is three main treaties that interact in a complicated way to form the basis of what we know as the European Union. If the new treaty had been adopted, this mess would have been sorted out. It would also have made it somewhat easier to lecture in the subject at the university,” says Professor Danielsen with a smile.
“What is so special and fascinating about EU Law is that in some cases, the provisions must be directly applied by the national authorities. The provisions are not national law – they are EU Law provisions – but the national authorities must apply them as if they were national law provisions,” says Professor Danielsen enthusiastically.
Danish is an authentic EU language
The fact that EU Law is directly applicable in the member countries means that all the official languages of these countries are also authentic languages in the EU.
“If Danish citizens are bound by EU provisions, they must also be able to read and preferably understand them. In this way, EU Law is significantly different from normal international law and decisions. The latter are not directly applicable in Denmark, but first have to be incorporated in Danish provisions. This makes a lot of sense when you think about the fact that the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, for instance, are only worded in English and French,” says Professor Danielsen.
Law and internationalisation
The majority of the university’s law graduates are trained for jobs in Denmark, where the spoken and written language is Danish, and most jurisprudence research is used in the Danish legal sector and administration. This represents a challenge to the legal discipline.
“It is a sign of the times that university disciplines should be ‘international’, but jurisprudence generally is not. This is not due to a lack of will, but jurisprudence primarily deals with national issues. EU Law and International Law are the most international of the legal disciplines and are therefore most affected by the demands for internationalisation,” says Professor Danielsen.
That is acceptable in his opinion, but if what is taught at the universities is to be useful, it is important to keep in mind what is required by a society in which the spoken and written language is primarily Danish. The EU Law and International Law subjects in the 3-year Bachelor of Laws degree are taught in Danish on the basis of texts mainly written in Danish.
“If these two disciplines are to play their just roles in legal practice, our students must be able to handle them in the context of the Danish language. You do not get far in a Danish court of law with English, French or German expressions, and an administrative authority would not be user-friendly if it referred to the effet utile principle of EU Law or the International Law principle of Drittwirkung in its decisions. However, in the 2-year Master’s degree programme, we offer the more advanced students a wide range of subjects in English within both EU Law and International Law,” says Professor Danielsen.
More debate in the main languages
Jurisprudence debates in the main European languages are more comprehensive than Danish debates, simply because many more research results are published in English, French and German. Literature in foreign languages gives law students access to a very wide range of material. However, to use this knowledge in practice, they have to be able to use the foreign language material in a Danish language context – at least for as long as Danish is the language spoken in Denmark.
Professor Danielsen cannot hide his vivid interest in EU Law and International Law, and it seems to rub off on the students.
“There is a growing interest in the subjects in the degree programme, and lawyers increasingly acknowledge that EU Law and International Law provisions can be extremely important. In many cases, provisions that at first sight appear to be Danish actually have their roots in EU Law. About 20% of the acts passed by the Danish parliament every year implement an EU directive or set out rules relating to EU regulations. This complicates teaching and especially legal research, as the primary task of this research is to make results available to the legal profession,” says Professor Danielsen.
Jens Hartig Danielsen is very pleased that there is a growing interest in EU Law and International Law at the School of Law.