Mestmäcker wrote that Eu­ro­pean Community law offered “for the first time” a means to fend off “economic power and government impotence” and “expand territorially the sphere of effectiveness of public power.” What this permitted was the separation of public and private law, providing market actors a forum beyond their own state to make their appeals—­directly now to the community level.

Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, loc. 691