Dr Gunnar Beck

Dr Gunnar Beck is an EU lawyer and legal and political philosopher.  He teaches our UG course Introduction to EU law, the PG course 'EU Law in Global Context' and for many years convened the MA in Law pre-sessional course in legal methodology and reasoning for many years. His book Fichte and Kant on freedom, rights and law offers a new interpretation of the relationship between Kant's and Fichte's theories of freedom and their doctrines of rights, law and the state. Gunnar Beck's 2013 monograph The Legal Reasoning of the Court of Justice of the EU has been published by Richard Hart, Oxford.  In this comprehensive study of the presuppositions of legal reasoning and of the Court of Justice’s case law he develops a heuristic model of judicial reasoning and argues that the Court of Justice’s legal reasoning has a clear communautaire tendency, although it also displays features which are common to the decision-making in other higher courts. In addition, Gunnar Beck has published numerous academic articles on a wide range of topics in EU law, legal and political philosophy.

From early 2002 to 2004 Gunnar Beck was a legal adviser to the UK parliamentary delegates at the Convention on the Future of Europe, and continued to serve as part-time deputy legal adviser to the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons until 2010. From 2000 to 2002 he worked as an employed barrister in the EU & Competition department of the London-based international law firm Herbert Smith. Gunnar Beck previously taught at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics where he was a lecturer in EU law and jurisprudence. From 2005 he has been teaching at SOAS.

Since 2012, in addition to his academic work, Gunnar Beck practices EU law from his Chambers at 1 Essex Court (Chambers of The Rt Hon Sir Tony Baldry). His practice extends to the following areas of law: EU constitutional law, EU sanctions law, implementation of EC Directives, EU financial and banking law, EU citizenship and human rights law, social security benefits for migrant workers, environmental impact assessments under EU law, free of movement of persons, goods, capital and services; extradition, VAT, cross-border aspects of direct taxation, competition law. He has also advised on all aspects of financial services regulation, especially the emerging law of the EU banking law and the regulatory regime of the euro zone.