Hjalte Rasmussen (18 December 1940 – 9 August 2012) was Professor of

European Union Law European Union law is a system of Supranational union, supranational Law, laws operating within the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). It has grown over time since the 1952 founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, to promote ...

at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

. Previously he was a professor of law at the Law Department of the

Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen Business School (Danish'': Handelshøjskolen i København'') often abbreviated and referred to as CBS (also in Danish), is a public university situated in Copenhagen, Denmark and is considered one of the most prestigious business scho ...

and a visiting professor at the

College of Europe The College of Europe (; ; ) is a post-graduate institute of European studies with three campuses in Bruges, Belgium; Warsaw, Poland; and Tirana, Albania. The College of Europe in Bruges was founded in 1949 as a result of the 1948 Congress of ...

, at Bruges. For his 70th birthday, a liber amicorum was published under the title "Europe. The New Legal Realism – Essays in Honour of Hjalte Rasmussen", (2010) edited by Henning Koch, Karsten Hagel-Sørensen, Ulrich Haltern and Joseph H.H. Weiler. His doctoral thesis "On Law and Policy in the

European Court of Justice The European Court of Justice (ECJ), officially the Court of Justice (), is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is tasked with interpreting ...

. A Comparative Study in Judicial Policymaking" was a ground-breaking critique of the European Court of Justice as policy-maker and was fiercely controversial. It was the first academically respectable book to question the Court's embrace of judicial activism in seeking to further European integration. The eminent British scholar Professor Paul Beaumont states: "The academic community of scholars interested in European Law owes a debt to Hjalte Rasmussen for his willingness to break out of the general mould of eulogising the Court of Justice in his controversial book in 1986. Judges are not democratically accountable and therefore their actions must be held to account by the small group of people who have the time and the training to follow their work closely. Criticism of the Court should be accepted as normal, especially by members of the Court. If the Court is acting properly its judgments and its apologists will have answers for their critics. Rasmussen may have had little to do with the Court's greater self-restraint in the 1990s but it is a welcome development. He is absolutely right to insist that the future direction of the European Union should be determined by its peoples in intergovernmental conferences and in the legislative process not by judicial rewriting of the words of the EC Treaty to conform to the Court's view of the meaning of the vague and inconclusive objectives of the Union set out at the beginning of the

EC Treaty The Treaty of Rome, or EEC Treaty (officially the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community), brought about the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), the best known of the European Communities (EC). The treaty was signe ...

." He was a member of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick University in Christiania was establis ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rasmussen, Hjalte 2012 deaths Academic staff of the University of Copenhagen Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Academic staff of Copenhagen Business School Academic staff of the College of Europe 1940 births