Postnational Constitutionalism: Europe and the Time of Law

This book develops a critical theory of postnational constitutionalism that challenges the misperceptions of EU law and its impact on political identity, sovereignty, and agency. It argues that reification, the process of attributing social and historical relationships as timeless relations among things, perpetuates crises of legitimacy in the EU. The book proposes a temporally-attuned constitutional theory with principles of anti-reification, narrative interpretation, and non-sovereign agency to sustain the emancipatory potential of EU constitutionalism. It focuses on migration and asylum as areas where questions of solidarity, law, and belonging are most generative and acute.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 13 April 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

When the European Union's people are struggling to come together through the rule of law, this book offers a critical theory of postnational constitutionalism. The prevailing notions of EU law continue to mislead citizens about the nature of political identity, sovereignty, and agency. They overlook a crucial aspect of post-nationalism, which is that constitutional self-authorship is a narrative, and the polity is a subject whose identity, history, and legacy are still in formation. Without this vision, EU law perpetuates crises of legitimacy, including the depoliticization of public life, emergency rule by executive decree, a collapse of solidarity, and the rise of nativist movements.

The book diagnoses this impasse as the result of a problem familiar to modernity: reification. Reification is a process in which social and historical relationships are misattributed as timeless relations among things. Reification's narrowing of social dilemmas, moral principles, and political action to narrow perceptions of the present explains law's role in perpetuating crisis. However, this diagnosis also points to a remedy. It suggests that to sustain the emancipatory potential of EU constitutionalism, we must recover law's relationship to time.

Postnational Constitutionalism: Europe and the Time of Law proposes a temporally-attuned constitutional theory with principles of anti-reification, narrative interpretation, and non-sovereign agency at its centre. These principles reimagine essential domains of constitutional order, including social integration, constitutional adjudication, and constituent power. The book spans various bodies of EU jurisprudence, with particular attention to migration and asylum, struggles where questions of solidarity, law, and belonging are most generative and acute.

In conclusion, this book offers a timely and critical analysis of postnational constitutionalism in the context of the European Union. It challenges prevailing notions of EU law and proposes a temporally-attuned constitutional theory that emphasizes the narrative, anti-reification, and non-sovereign aspects of constitutional order. By recovering law's relationship to time, the book offers a way forward for sustaining the emancipatory potential of EU constitutionalism and addressing the crises of legitimacy that threaten the region.

Weight: 760g
Dimension: 320 x 320 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192899187