The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union

The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union
Author: Signe Rehling Larsen
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2021-02-04
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198859260

This book departs from the 'statist' imagination by suggesting the EU is a federal union of states, or a federation. Dedicated to the constitutional theory of federalism, this book gives the strengths and weaknesses of a federation as a political form, its histories, and current perils for the EU.

Europe's Functional Constitution

Europe's Functional Constitution
Author: Turkuler Isiksel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2016
Genre: Law
ISBN: 019875907X

Constitutionalism has become a byword for legitimate government, but is it fated to lose its relevance as constitutional states relinquish power to international institutions? This book evaluates the extent to which constitutionalism, as an empirical idea and normative ideal, can be adapted to institutions beyond the state by surveying the sophisticated legal and political system of the European Union. Having originated in a series of agreements between states, the EU has acquired important constitutional features like judicial review, protections for individual rights, and a hierarchy of norms. Nonetheless, it confounds traditional models of constitutional rule to the extent that its claim to authority rests on the promise of economic prosperity and technocratic competence rather than on the democratic will of citizens. Critically appraising the European Union and its legal system, this book proposes the idea of "functional constitutionalism" to describe this distinctive configuration of public power. Although the EU is the most advanced instance of functional constitutionalism to date, understanding this pragmatic mode of constitutional authority is essential for assessing contemporary international economic governance.

Political Theory and the European Constitution

Political Theory and the European Constitution
Author: Lynn Dobson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2004-08-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134297041

In June 2003, the Convention on the Future of Europe released what may become the Constitution of the European Union. This timely volume provides one of the first critical assessments of the draft Constitution from the vantage point of political theory. The work combines detailed institutional analysis with normative political theory, bringing theoretical analysis to bear on the pressing issues of institutional design answered - or bypassed - by the draft Constitution. It addresses several themes that play out differently in federal arrangements than in unitary political orders: * European values, especially the legitimate role of alleged common values * liberty and powers - how does the draft Constitution address competing normative preferences? * the European interest: the noble words regarding common European objectives and values are often muddled or conflated, different actors intending quite different things. Several chapters contribute to clarifying the different senses of these terms.

Constitutional and Political Theory

Constitutional and Political Theory
Author: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2017
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198714963

In this representative edition of Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde's definitive work in constitutionalism, law, and politics, readers have access to the legal discourse of one of Germany's leading contemporary theorists and former judge of the federal constitutional court.

A Republican Europe of States

A Republican Europe of States
Author: Richard Bellamy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2019-01-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107022282

Examines the democratic legitimacy of international organisations from a republican perspective, diagnoses the EU as suffering from a democratic disconnect and offers 'demoicracy' as the cure.

The Political Philosophy of the European City

The Political Philosophy of the European City
Author: Ferenc Hörcher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2021-06-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1793610835

The Political Philosophy of the European City is a courageous and wide-ranging panorama of the political life and thought of the European city. Its novel hypothesis is that modern Western political thought, since the time of Hobbes and Locke, underestimated the political significance and value of the community of urban citizens, called ‘civitas’, united by local customs, or even a formal or informal urban constitution at a certain location, which had a recognizable countenance, with natural and man-made, architectural marks, called ‘urbs’. Recalling the golden age of the European city in ancient Greece and Rome, and offering a detailed description of its turbulent life in the Renaissance Italian city-states, it makes a case for the city not only as a hotbed of modern democracy, but also as a remedy for some of the distortions of political life in the alienated contemporary, centralized, Weberian bureaucratic state. Overcoming the north-south divide, or the core and periphery partition, the book’s material is particularly rich in Central European case studies. All in all, it is an enjoyable read which offers sound arguments to revisit the offer of the small and middle-sized European town, in search of a more sustainable future for Europe.

Constituent Power in the European Union

Constituent Power in the European Union
Author: Markus Patberg
Publisher:
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198845219

Oxford Constitutional Theory has rapidly established itself as the primary point of reference for theoretical reflections on the growing interest in constitutions and constitutional law in domestic, regional, and global contexts. The majority of the works published in the series are monographs that advance new understandings of their subject But the series aims to provide a forum for further innovation in the field by also including well-conceived edited collections that bring a variety of perspectives and disciplinary approaches to bear on specific themes in constitutional thought and by publishing English translations of leading monographs in constitutional theory that have originally been written in languages other than English. Book jacket.

Constitutional Imaginaries

Constitutional Imaginaries
Author: Jiří Přibáň
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000456099

This book offers a social theoretical analysis of imaginaries as constituent social forces of positive law and politics. Constitutional imaginaries invite constitutional and political theorists, philosophers and sociologists to rethink the concept of constitution as the normative legal limitation and control of political power. They show that political constitutions include societal forces impossible to contain by legal norms and political institutions. The constitution of society as one polity defined by the unity of topos-ethnos-nomos, that is the unity of territory, people and their laws, informed the rise of modern nations and nationalisms as much as constitutional democratic statehood and its liberal and republican regimes. However, the imaginary of polity as one nation living on a given territory under the constitutional rule of law is challenged by the process of European integration and its imaginaries informed by transnational legal and societal pluralism, administrative governance, economic performativity and democratically mobilised polity. This book discusses the sociology of imagined communities and the philosophy of modern social imaginaries in the context of transnational European constitutionalism and its recent theories, most notably the theory of societal constitutions. It offers a new approach to the legal constitutions as societal power formations evolving at national, European and global levels. The book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in constitutional and European law theory and philosophy as much as interdisciplinary and socio-legal studies of transnational law and society.

Creating European Citizens

Creating European Citizens
Author: Willem Maas
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2007
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780742554863

Exploring a key aspect of European integration, this clear and thoughtful book considers the remarkable experiment with common rights and citizenship in the EU. Governments around the world traditionally distinguish insiders (citizens) from outsiders (foreigners). Yet over the past half-century, an extensive set of supranational rights has been created in Europe that removes member governments' authority to privilege their own citizens, a hallmark of sovereignty. The culmination of supranational rights, European citizenship not only provides individuals with choices about where to live and work but also forces governments to respect those choices. Explaining this innovation--why states cede their sovereignty and eradicate or redefine the boundaries of the political community by including "foreigners"--Willem Maas analyzes the development of European citizenship within the larger context of the evolution of rights. Imagining more than simply a free trade market, the goal of building a "broader and deeper community among peoples" with a "destiny henceforward shared"--creating European citizens--has informed European integration since its origins. The author argues that its success or failure will not only determine the future of Europe but will also provide lessons for political integration elsewhere.

The Crisis of the European Union

The Crisis of the European Union
Author: Jürgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2014-03-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0745681530

Translated by Ciaran Cronin. In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas’s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very existence of the European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas’s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states. Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership.