History

Fordham Law School has a long history of commitment to the European Union. In 1962, Fordham,  under the direction of Professor Joseph Crowley, organized perhaps the first conference in the United States on EU Law with the collaboration and participation of EU officials and judges.

In 1974, the Fordham Competition Law Institute, under the leadership of Professor Barry Hawk, began an annual conference on international antitrust law that has included close cooperation among judges of the Court of Justice and the General Court and officials of the Commission.  Professor Hawk has authored numerous books and articles on EU competition law, and has spent a year in Brussels as a consultant to DG Competition and the Legal Service.  The annual conference continues to the present. For many years in the first decade of this century, Fordham also organized two-week training sessions each summer for EU and other officials and judges on competition law and economics. These training sessions were led primarily by EU and US government lawyers, judges, and economists.

In 1984, Fordham broadened its coverage of EU law by creating the Center on European Community Law and International Antitrust, which would later become the Fordham Center on European Union Law. Under the initial direction of Professor Hawk, Fordham organized courses, seminars, and events on many aspects of EU Law, including, among others, general treaty principles, trade law, company law, judicial process, and competition law. Two courses were offered each academic year, with six EU officials or judges leading classes. This represented a significant investment from the EU and made Fordham a unique location for the study of EU law in the United States.

In 1990, the late Professor Roger Goebel, who had joined Fordham in 1984 and was one of the first academics at a law school in the United States to offer courses on European Union law,  took over the leadership of the EU Center. Professor Goebel, who passed away in 2018, served as the Center on European Union Law's director until 2016. Under his leadership, the Center fostered Fordham Law’s relationships with United States and European law schools. He was also instrumental in building and nurturing the School’s LL.M. program, and he served as a mentor to many international students who matriculated at Fordham through his influence. Showcasing his commitment to EU law, Professor Goebel published extensively on the field and other international legal matters. His book Cases and Materials on European Union Law, which he co-authored with Eleanor Fox, George Bermann, Jeffrey Atik, and Frank Emmert, is now in its fourth edition and remains a vital law school text. Many European academics first learned of Fordham Law School through Professor Goebel’s work, making him one of the school’s great ambassadors.

During this period, the objectives of the Center included enabling lectures at Fordham and elsewhere on current European Union Law Topics by Court of Justice Judges, officials of the European Commission and Council, members of the European Parliament, and European scholars; development of curriculum and teaching materials to be used at Fordham and other law schools in the United States and Europe; facilitation of exchange of ideas and information among scholars, government officials, lawyers, business executives and students; for example, exposure of foreign officials and scholars to US legal concepts and exposure of Americans to European Union Law. Professor Goebel regularly hosted lectures by Judges of the European Court of Justice and Court of First Instance, Members of the European Parliament, and high-ranking officials of the European Commission’s directorates.

In 2016, leadership of the Center passed to Professor Mark Patterson and Professor Martin Gelter, who continues to direct the Center after Professor Patterson’s retirement. The Center began to focus on academic events, events for students, and public lectures. One of the most notable events was the symposium EU Law With the UK – EU Law Without the UK, organized in cooperation with the Fordham International Law Journal to explore the implications of Brexit for important substantive areas of EU business law.

The more than 50 years of cooperation between Fordham and the EU was recognized and celebrated by Vice President Vestager in 2024.