I begin the book with the story of passenger rights in the EU—a story which illustrates many of the dynamics described in the book.Many readers will be familiar with the posters and displays on computer monitors in airports across Europe that remind travelers of their rights under the EU passenger rights directive. “Denied boarding? Cancelled? Delayed for a Long Time?” the posters ask. They then instruct travelers on what their rights are and how to file compensation claims.Thousands of disgruntled passengers have brought such claims under the EU directive. European airlines formed an association to challenge the directive’s legality before the European Court of Justice, but lost the case. And the Court has continued to make expansive interpretations of the directive, bolstering passenger rights.The European Commission has taken legal action against member state governments who failed to adequately implement the directive. And a niche industry of compensation claims firms has emerged—working on a contingency fee basis—to help passengers file claims against the airlines.This chain of legal events would have been unimaginable thirty years ago. Back then, the entire story would have been wholly out of step with prevailing patterns of law and regulation. Today, the air passenger rights saga is quite typical of broader trends in EU regulation.There are two sides to the rise of Eurolegalism.On the one hand, critics might view it as a kind of American disease. The growing role of law, lawyers, and litigation will bring with it some of the pathologies we are all too familiar with here in the US, such as high legal expenses, slow, conflictual regulatory procedures and adversarial relationships between stakeholders in the policy process.On the other hand, Eurolegalism may increase the transparency of regulatory processes, enhance access to justice, and ultimately force public officials to be more accountable for their policy decisions.Whether the positives will outweigh the negatives remains to be seen. What is clear is that the rise of Eurolegalism will affect not just the legal system but European democracy itself. Growing judicial power and the tendency to frame policies as individual rights will make it more difficult for countries to pursue consensus policies formulated to serve broad public interests where judges declare that these conflict with individual rights.With the Eurozone in crisis and some skeptics questioning the long-term viability of the EU, it is a good time to remember the key role that the EU legal system plays in holding the EU together.The EU is a community under the rule of law, and, whatever its present challenges, it is a community that has promoted democracy, peace and prosperity across Europe over the past half century. The rise of Eurolegalism may bring with it an excess of law, lawyers and litigation, but we may simply have to accept this as a small price to be paid to maintain European unity.