Using the example of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), this article addresses the lack of historical contextualization which is prevalent in most general accounts of EU law and EU institutions. It argues that this narrative is the result of a tradition established by the founders of the discipline. For these early ‘Euro-lawyers’, distinguishing the practice of European institutions from earlier international institutions had important political implications. This was especially true with regard to the ECJ. By providing a selective and partly decontextualized narrative of this court and describing it as largely unprecedented in international law, early Euro-lawyers were not only able to bolster the ‘supranational’ and ‘sui generis’ character of their nascent discipline. They were also able to avoid comparisons between the ECJ and prior international courts and tribunals whose similarly wide-ranging powers and integrated nature had been considered as politically problematic.

本文以欧洲法院（ECJ）为例，解决了缺乏历史语境化的情况，这在欧盟法律和欧盟机构的大多数一般情况下都十分普遍。它认为，这种叙述是该学科创始人建立的传统的结果。对于这些早期的“欧洲律师”，将欧洲机构的实践与早期的国际机构区分开来具有重要的政治意义。对于欧洲法院来说尤其如此。通过提供关于该法院的选择性的和部分去上下文化的叙述，并将其描述为国际法中前所未有的叙述，早期的欧洲律师不仅能够加强其新生学科的“超国家”和“特殊”性质。他们还能够避免将欧洲法院与以前的国际法院和法庭进行比较，后者以前同样具有广泛的权力和综合性质，在政治上存在问题。