Political Constitutionalism and the European Union

What kind of constitution is emerging in Europe? There are two approaches to answering this question. The first, a ‘foundational’ approach, rejects the premise: there can be no real constitution in the absence of a ‘demos’, a foundation which exists only nationally. The second, ‘freestanding’ approach, depicts it as paradigmatic of a broader phenomenon of cosmopolitan constitutionalism, based on individual rights guaranteed through a transnational rule of law. Rejecting both for their failure to account for European constitutionalism as a historical process of polity‐building, a third approach, ‘political constitutionalism’, is proposed, capturing the dynamic quality of constitutionalisation in the EU. From this perspective, what is emerging in Europe is a constitution that reflects a common good (predominantly conceived in economic terms), albeit one which is legally, political and socially contested. It is by capturing this complex picture of the political formation of Europe that the constitutional question will be most fruitfully pursued.     

Constitutional Irresolution: Law and the Framing of Civil Society

Abstract: Against the constitutional optimism that pervades our political rationality, I will argue the case for a disorganised civil society, genuinely plural, resistant to dominant representations that call it into line and thus undercut its radical potential. I will explore some of the more adventurous and persuasive such attempts to argue for an inclusive constitutionalism, one that supposedly reaches out to civil society and in order to do so relaxes the rigidity of its own terms, to harbour and host the diversity it aspires to represent. I will argue that these attempts at inclusion create constitutional irresolutions either forcing impossible demands on constitutionalism or dispelling the disorganisation it is meant to give expression to. I will then argue that in spite of the inability to capture them as constitutional moments, politics of ‘pure presence’ and real self‐determination are possible, and against constitutional mystifications, resistance might find its opportunity in praxis, understood in the language of praxis philosophy (more specifically the work of Antonio Negri).     

The Perils of ‘As If’ European Constitutionalism

This review article offers thoughts on Kaarlo Tuori's recent book, European Constitutionalism, and more particularly on what he calls the ‘disciplinary contest over the legal characterisation of the EU and its law’. As the book's title suggests, Tuori privileges the constitutional perspective in that contest, so much so—he freely admits—that his analysis ‘predetermine[s] how the EU and its law will be portrayed’. And therein also lies the book's main weakness. Tuori's predetermined ‘constitutional’ interpretation, like so much of the dominant legal discourse in the EU today, ultimately obscures the core contradiction in EU public law. National institutions are increasingly constrained in the exercise of their own constitutional authority but supranational institutions are unable to fill the void because Europeans refuse to endow them with the sine qua non of genuine constitutionalism: the autonomous capacity to mobilise fiscal and human resources in a compulsory fashion. The EU's lack of constitutional power in this robust sense derives from the absence of the necessary socio‐political underpinnings for genuine constitutional legitimacy—what we can call the power‐legitimacy nexus in EU public law. To borrow Tuori's own evocative phrase, the EU possesses at best a ‘parasitic legitimacy’ derived from the more robust constitutionalism of the Member States as well as from the positive connotations that using ‘constitutional’ terminology evokes regardless of its ultimate aptness. The result is an ‘as if’ constitutionalism, the core feature of which is an increasingly untenable principal‐agent inversion between the EU and the Member States, one with profound consequences for the democratic life of Europeans. The sustainability of integration over the long term depends on confronting these adverse features of ‘European constitutionalism’ directly, something that legal elites—whether EU judges, lawyers, or legal scholars—ignore at their peril.     

Constitutionalism,populism, and the imaginary of the authentic polity: a socio-legal analysis of European public spheres and constitutional demoicratization

The sociology of constitutionalism emphasizes the duality of constitutions as both power limitations and power enhancements. Following the socio-legal perspective, this article focuses on the constitutional imaginary of the public sphere and distinguishes it from the imaginary of the authentic polity, in which the constituent power of the people is protected against the corrupting effect of representative institutions and technocratic bodies. The promise of authenticity is behind the recent resurgence of populism and the constitution of what Zygmunt Bauman describes as ‘explosive communities’. The final part of the article focuses on the transnational politics and law of the European Union (EU) and discusses its possible responses to the imaginaries of constitutional populism – most notably, the emergence of European public spheres and demoicracy. Without the constitutional imaginaries of an anti-explosive transnational and democratically constituted community, further enhancement of the power of EU institutions will always lead to populist backlash at the national and local levels of its member states.     

Democracy and emergency: finding the constitutional foundation of the knowledgeable state in social dynamics

This article aims to bring to light the law–society dynamic relationship in constitutional governance by engaging with the question of political constitutionalism from the perspective of institutional epistemology. It first reframes the debate surrounding legal and political constitutionalism as one concerning the state's ‘epistemic competence’ in governance shaped by the constitution, and then traces how constitutional ordering has given rise to the ‘knowledgeable state’ by setting a unique social dynamic in motion: the ‘epistemico-political constitution’. Using the example of the World Health Organization's initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a the article presents a two-part argument. First, constitutional ordering institutes a process of knowledge production embedded in the interaction between the state and society – a unique law–society dynamic – that responds to governance needs. Second, given the current law–society dynamic in the suprastate political landscape, the legitimacy challenge facing expertise-steered global governance is further intensified as more crisis responses are expected from outside the state.     

Post‐Sovereignty and the European Legal Space

The political constitution of the European polity has become strained in recent years by insistent pressures on its institutional capacity to resolve social problems. The article examines the EU's polity crisis in the context of the development of a distinctive modern conception of secular constitutional authority, focused on the ideal of sovereign self‐determination. As the work of Neil MacCormick illustrates, the EU provides a radical challenge to the on‐going capacity of the concept of sovereignty to provide a framework to address problems of legitimacy. The article explores the nature of this challenge, its historical context and its consequences with reference to debates over the nature of constitutional pluralism. It sets out a path to the renewal of the European constitutional debate through a re‐consideration of secular constitutional authority and the necessity of its connection to the idea of sovereignty. The article seeks to re‐engage in the task of ‘questioning sovereignty’.     

Transnational constitutionalism – conflicts-law constitutionalism – economic constitutionalism: the exemplary case of the European Union

Transnational constitutionalism is both a sociological given and a legal challenge. We observe the emergence of ever more legally framed transnational arrangements with ever more power and impact. Do such arrangements deserve to be called legitimate rule in Habermasian terms? Is it at all conceivable that the proprium of law can be defended against the rise of its informal competitors? This article opts for a third way that listens to neither the siren songs on law beyond the state nor to the defences of nation-state constitutionalism as the monopolist of legitimate rule. The proposed alternative suggests that transnational legal ordering of the European Union should build on its reconceptualization as a ‘three-dimensional conflicts law’ with a democracy-enhancing potential. This reconceptualization operationalizes the ‘united in diversity’ motto of the Draft Constitutional Treaty of 2004, preserves the essential accomplishments of Europe's constitutional democracies, provides for co-operative problem solving of transnational regulatory tasks, and retains supervisory powers over national and transnational arrangements of private governance.     

Constitutionalism and Dissonances: Has Europe Paid Off Its Debt to Functionalism?

Abstract The negative outcomes of the French and Dutch referenda on the Constitutional Treaty have opened a period of profound constitutional disenchantment in relation to the EU. This impression seems confirmed by the recent Presidency Conclusions of the European Council which, although salvaging many important solutions contained in the Constitutional Treaty, explicitly sanction that ‘the constitutional concept . . . is abandoned’. In the light of this context, what role could the constitutional scholarship play? How to make sense of a polity in which the claims of constitutionalism as a form of power are politically unappealing though legally plausible? This article tries to respond to these questions by reaffirming functionalism as a valid analytical and normative perspective in facing the current constitutional reality of European integration. The analytical value associated with functionalism is evidenced by testing against the current context of the EU legal framework the accounts for EU constitutionalism which postulate functional equivalence between the EU and the Member States. The normative potential of functionalism, then, is discussed by arguing that there may be a value worth preserving in a degree of functional discrepancy between the EU and state constitutionalism and, notably, that the transformative and civilising dividend inherent in functionalism could still be exploited, at least in certain areas of EU policy making. Finally, the article suggests that the difficulties in accounting for EU constitutionalism in the light of state‐centred constitutional theory could be regarded as symptoms of European integration marking a moment in the theoretical evolution of constitutionalism.     

立宪政体中的赋税问题

以赋税问题作为看待财产权与宪政制度之关系的一个切入点 ,通过对财产权在宪政之先的论述 ,提出赋税的合法性问题。当前的财政危机导致对源自民间的赋税的依赖性增强 ,从而凸现出赋税合法性的危机。解决这一危机的方向是继续沿着财产权入宪的思路 ,确立“税收法定”的宪政主义的赋税模式。     

Constitutional Directives: Morally‐Committed Political Constitutionalism

About 37 state constitutions around the world feature non‐justiciable thick moral commitments (‘constitutional directives’). These directives typically oblige the state to redistribute income and wealth, guarantee social minimums, or forge a religious or secular identity for the state. They have largely been ignored in a constitutional scholarship defined by its obsession with the legitimacy of judicial review and hostility to constitutionalising thick moral commitments other than basic rights. This article presents constitutional directives as obligatory telic norms, addressed primarily to the political state, which constitutionalise thick moral objectives. Their full realisation—through increasingly sophisticated mechanisms designed to ensure their political enforcement—is deferred to a future date. They are weakly contrajudicative in that these duties are not directly enforced by courts. Functionally, they help shape the discourse over a state's constitutional identity, and regulate its political and judicial organs. Properly understood, they are a key tool to realise a morally‐committed conception of political constitutionalism.     

European Civil Society: Shaped by Discourses and Institutional Interests

Abstract: During recent years, the concept of European civil society has gained increasing popularity. The European Institutions themselves have developed a discourse on civil society and civil dialogue. Institutional interests have shaped this discourse. Reframing the normative context for EU democracy, this discourse suits some institutions better than others. In particular, the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Commission have made recourse to it; the former to redefine its proper role and combat the risk of marginalisation within the European institutional set‐up; the latter first to build support for policy initiatives in the social sphere and subsequently to respond to the legitimacy crisis of the Brussels’ bureaucracy. These institutional interests have inspired a conceptualisation of civil society as ‘functional participation’ and ‘functional representation’ rather than as ‘politicisation’ or ‘decentralisation’. However, while the Commission and the ESC have had some success in selling their discourse, to be successful in the longer run some problematic assumptions of the discourse should be tackled and both the different rationales for civil society involvement as well as the multi‐level character of European civil society and European policymaking should be taken into account.     

宪政语境下的公民主体性法理分析——兼析中国宪政语境下的“国家—市民社会”范式的历史逻辑缺陷

学界对宪政主义与市民社会的引入与研究普遍地存在割裂了西方语境下的宪政主义与市民社会的历史逻辑链条的问题,它忽视了公民主体性这个宪政发展与市民社会构成的基础性与结构性的要件。现代宪政意味着权力自身的矛盾运动,它需要对权力的矛盾运动予以限制和控制以使得其在理性的轨道中运行。权力精英之间的权力博弈在现代宪政中是必不可少的,但是这种权力博弈如果没有具有主体性的公民组成的成熟市民社会的参与,那么它就可能导致宪政体系的崩溃。     

Beyond ‘Constitutionalism Beyond the State’

For contemporary constitutional theory, the key challenge posed by globalization undermines the traditional link between constitutionalism and the state: in response to multi‐level governance, theories of constitutionalism beyond the state have been advanced. This focus on levels obscures more fundamental epistemological questions raised by globalization about the nature of constitutionalism itself. Critical analysis of three leading schools of constitutionalism beyond the state – supranational, societal, and new constitutionalism – highlights their shared assumptions with state‐based thought regarding the separation between economics and politics, and the necessarily hegemonic character of constitutionalism. However, globalization intensifies critique of these assumptions, and questions their translation to the transnational context. An alternative scholarly fault line to the state/non‐state cleavage emerges between working within and transcending the politics of constitutional knowledge produced during the nation‐state era. A broader globalization perspective reveals the extent to which such processes of constitutional rethinking are under way through developments in the global South.     

The economic constitution and the political constitution: seeking the common good in the post-national setting

In the post-national setting, the concept of the ‘economic constitution’ has been seen as design template and saviour; whether based on transactional certitude or founded on ordoliberal precepts, the economic constitution is assumed to legitimate economic integration across national borders in the absence of comprehensive political settlement. Nevertheless, recent tensions – not only within the European Union (EU) but also, more strikingly, within the World Trade Organization context – indicate the limits of economic constitutionalism. This article seeks to identify the roots of recent dysfunction within the history and theory of economic constitutionalism. It traces the evolution of an adjudicational economic constitutionalism and its place within the EU legal order, including the new EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and contrasts this vision with the more comprehensive and/or socialized models of economic constitutionalism found not only within the Weimar Republic but also within the post-revolutionary/post-conflict constitutional context. The article also places a major emphasis on theorizing around the apex of economic-constitutional thought, ordoliberalism, but concludes that no concept of the economic constitution can be seen in isolation from its social-political context, or from notions of the common good. To this exact degree, failures in modern economic constitutionalism may derive from a misplaced universalism – a technocratic absolutism that abdicates political responsibility for the common good, locating it instead in an ‘idolatry of the factual’ or a new naturalism of market inevitability.     

Reforming the United Kingdom Constitution: Law,Convention, Soft Law

The Governance of Britain Green Paper continues the programme of constitutional reform begun in 1997, and appears to reinforce the juridification of the UK's constitution. Nevertheless, several key reforms will be implemented not by legislation, but by creating new conventions. This article argues that such ‘declared’ conventions are best understood as a form of constitutional ‘soft law’, which attempt to influence constitutional behaviour rather than generating binding norms. Applying a regulatory analysis, it then argues that the case for a soft, rather than hard law approach to constitutional reform is weaker than its widespread use in the UK suggests. Finally, the article challenges the thesis that the political constitution is being replaced by a legal constitution, arguing that the government's attitude to constitutional reform still exhibits basic characteristics of political constitutionalism. Moreover, there is more to contemporary constitutional developments than a bipolar contest between political and legal constitutionalism.     

Constitutional Balance in the EU after the Euro‐Crisis

This article analyses how the European Union's response to the euro‐crisis has altered the constitutional balance upon which its stability is based. It argues that the stability and legitimacy of any political system requires the structural incorporation of individual and political self‐determination. In the context of the EU, this requirement is met through the idea of constitutional balance, with ‘substantive’, ‘institutional’ and ‘spatial’ dimensions. Analysing reforms to EU law and institutional structure in the wake of the crisis – such as the establishment of the ESM, the growing influence of the European Council and the creation of a stand‐alone Fiscal Compact – it is argued that recent reforms are likely to have a lasting impact on the ability of the EU to mediate conflicting interests in all three areas. By undermining its constitutional balance, the response to the crisis is likely to dampen the long‐term stability and legitimacy of the EU project.     

Activism and Popular Constitutionalism in Contemporary Vietnam

Based on Chinese constitutional analysis, political science, and law and society studies, we argue that work extending the application of popular constitutionalism to authoritarian states applies in Vietnam, as popular constitutionalism targets sites relevant to constitutional reform. We contend that popular constitutionalism located in authoritarian states requires three factors: a tradition of activism, space for reformist and pragmatic dialogue targeting constitutional change, and the political need for legitimacy. This article analyses activism in Vietnam, focusing on the lodging of Petition 72 with the Constitutional Amendment Drafting Commission in 2013, and the resulting responses. We conclude that this activism was pivotal in advocating for new constitutional norms, evidencing popular constitutionalism in Vietnam. The long history of Vietnamese scholar activism, the relative space for governance debates, and the political need for legitimacy made this possible. We also note that popular constitutionalism faces constraints in authoritarian states, which may shape its trajectory.     

Responsive Adjudication and the ‘Social Legitimacy’ of the Internal Market

This article is concerned with the social legitimacy of EU free movement adjudication. What does social legitimacy entail within the multi‐level ‘embedded liberalism’ construction of the internal market? How can the objective of free movement (market access) and a commitment to social diversity both be pursued without one necessarily trumping the other? This article seeks to contribute to these questions on the basis of a discussion of what has come to be known as the argument from transnational effects and the development of an adjudicative model that can be termed ‘socially responsive’. On the basis of an ‘ideal types’ analysis of the case law of the Court, it is concluded that responsiveness to Member State social context is lacking in any coherent form in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. However, a responsive model of adjudication can be (re)constructed by streamlining the identified ideal type adjudicative rationales. In the midst of this process of discovery, an operational rationale to establish the substantive (social) scope and reach of the internal market shall be submitted.     

The Argument from Transnational Effects I: Representing Outsiders through Freedom of Movement

This article and its sequel examine an argument that has become a shibboleth for the European pro‐attitude towards international and supranational legal arrangements. I call it the argument from transnational effects. The argument says that supranational or transnational forms of integration, in particular market integration, are desirable on account of democracy itself. National democracies find themselves thereby forced to confront and to internalise the externalities that they cause for one another. A fortiori, democracy becomes supposedly emancipated from the confines of the nation state. Since the argument favours normative limitations on national political processes it seems to lend strong support to the introduction of transnational constitutional discipline. In this article and its sequel it is claimed that the argument, correctly understood, cannot support the creation of transnational democracy. Rather, in a critically recalibrated form, the argument, paradoxically, provides strong backing for the existence of bounded political communities without, for that reason, succumbing to ontologically questionable beliefs about the essence of national communities. Hence, the argument is really as much about the limits set to transnational integration as it is about their legitimacy. This explains why it is of central relevance to constitutionalism in a global age. The opening sections of this article offer an interpretation of John Hart Ely's constitutional theory. Examining the latter helps to articulate adequately the democratic sensibility expressed in the argument. It is argued that Ely's theory exceeds the scope of a mere theory of judicial review. It presents, indeed, a theory of constitutional authority, which is highly relevant to an analysis of the argument from transnational effects. The article then distinguishes and discusses two different readings of the representation‐reinforcing task that Ely attributes to constitutional legality. According to one reading, representation is secondary and only ancillary to the realisation of equality. According to another reading, equal participation is prerequisite to the success of representative democracy whose aim is to discover common ground. It is concluded that the first reading is easier to accommodate in a transnational setting. It will be seen that Ely's theory—at any rate, the first reading of it—is basically concerned with the problem addressed by the argument from transnational effects. This article's discussion of the argument distinguishes two different types of situation. A third, more general type will be dealt with in a subsequent article. The first situation affects people who realise that they would be better off if they were to benefit from the laws of a different democracy. Hence, they would like to have these laws imported. It is argued that their interests do not find support in the argument from transnational effects. The second situation concerns someone who encounters obstacles when moving from one democracy to another. Such obstacles can emerge either as a result of discrimination against non‐nationals or from the sheer fact that laws between and among bounded societies are different. The antidote against the latter is to submit national legislation to a proportionality test. Even though reinforcing representation prima facie seems to support this conclusion, the article claims that virtual representation, correctly understood, actually restricts the sweep of constitutional control to cases of behavioural discrimination. Extending the scope of control would actually violate the respect that it is owed to national democratic autonomy pursuant to the principle of virtual representation. It is also shown that only by limiting its sweep the argument from transnational effects can be prevented from endorsing neoliberal political goals.     

Examining the Aesthetic Dimensions of the Constitutional Treaty

Abstract:  One of the most important issues surrounding the new Constitutional Treaty is the extent to which it will be able to generate a greater popular identification with the European integration project. This article explores this issue in more depth by looking at the role of popular identification in securing polity legitimacy in general. An argument is then developed that although popular identification and polity legitimacy are often separated, from a practical point of view, it is preferable to think of polity legitimacy in such a way as to incorporate questions of identity and affectivity. The article then outlines a way in which such a theory can be constructed, termed an 'aesthetic' theory of political legitimacy. Such a theory is then applied to understand both the EU as a distinctive type of post-state polity and the role that the constitutional tradition might play in securing its legitimacy.