ABSTRACT
Debates around the question of integration of and through law in the European Union (EU) may usefully be set within or contrasted with broader sociological theories of juridification. This arguably can open out matters of integration in at least three ways. First, it asks what their location and significance might be within a longer-term historical perspective of law's changing social roles. Second, it asks questions about the impact of legal form and substance on other social systems and expectations. Thirdly, it seeks to expose to evaluation whether integration involves relationships of mutuality or of asymmetry with respect to political values, standards and possibilities. In terms of the establishment and maintenance of the internal market, the massive effort involved is centrally directed at an always renewing embedding of what Polanyi identified as the conditions of the 'market society', now relabelled the 'social market'.
