European Union (EU) law, with a history of approximately 60 years, remains one of the younger legal disciplines around the world. The scholarship in this field initially focused on the development of the European Economic Community and its common market, gradually branching out, in tandem with the ever-expanding reach of the relevant rules. The number of books and journals has grown exponentially, with novel genres like blogs and podcasts recently gaining in popularity too. Increases in size or quantity should, however, not be automatically equated with the notion of ‘progress’ as such. For a sound measuring of progress, the key question that needs to be answered is the extent to which the knowledge base has been advanced, and whether genuinely superior insights have been acquired over the course of time. In EU law scholarship, these issues are closely connected to the general tone and objectives of the leading studies, which can be seen to have evolved significantly. The current article zooms in on three publications from the 2010-2020 period, discussing how they fit into the overall picture, indicating in what way the progress label may fruitfully be applied to these pieces, and hereby also reflecting on how they are believed to have exerted a marked influence on the work of subsequent authors.

The article discusses what should be considered as ‘progress’ in criminal law scholarship, as a legal scholarly discipline. What is considered progress depends on one’s ideas about the aim(s) of a scholarly discipline and how it should develop to better achieve that aim. Criminal law scholarship is, for its part, characterized by its study of positive criminal law from a knowledge point of view, one that puts criminal law scholarship in close contact with the philosophy of criminal law. At the same time, positive criminal law must be subjected to this perspective. As such, while criminal law scholarship may progress in many ways, the article claims particular importance to what is called ‘theoretical integration’. This refers to the operation of bringing aspects of positive law into the knowledge perspective of criminal law scholarship, to subject it to study. The article exemplifies the value of doing so by three works from contemporary criminal law scholarship.