ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Brexit as an expression of the interlegality of European Union (EU) laws and policies gone astray. It explains how Santos’ ‘Law: A Map of Misreading’ and ideas borrowed from cartography can be applied to the study of EU law. The chapter examines how EU law has been used to devise a set of core values and a collective European identity aimed at conferring legitimacy on EU institutions and integrating the Member States into a political union. It argues that the EU’s failure to generate a collective European identity needs to be examined in view of how its hierarchy of political power and legal authority constrains its interlegality. In the context of EU governance, interlegality works top-down or bottom-up. When flowing top-down, the EU’s interlegality has the authority of the EU behind it and is mediated through the legal systems of the Member States.
