This book provides an authoritative account and analysis of the general principles of EC law - essential to an understanding not only of the rapidly growing and increasingly specialized areas of substantive EC law, and the process of judicial review, but also to the evolution of the EU more generally.

A central concern of the book is to explain how the European Court has developed general principles of law derived from the national legal systems of the Member States, from the EC Treaty itself, and from the international agreements to which Member States are parties - and then to show how these general principles have been applied and interpreted in practice.