Societal constitutions in transnational regimes: an introduction

This collection is the outcome of `Societal Constitutions in Transnational Regimes', the second annual conference of Cardiff University's Centre of Law and Society, held at the School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, 30 June±1 July 201

Constitutional imaginaries and legitimation: On potentia, potestas, and auctoritas in societal constitutionalism

This article focuses on the presence of non-political power in societal constitutions and their imaginaries. The theory of societal constitutions recontextualizes constitutionalism beyond public law, statehood, and polity. However, it also raises the question of legitimation and the authority of these non-polity-based constitutional regimes operating independently of public reasoning. Societal constitutions enhance power through specific knowledge regimes and imaginaries transform them into generally shared systems of rules and norms. This constitutionalization of the systemic facts of power as legitimizing values of the system can be identified in political as much as societal constitutions. The theory of societal constitutions, therefore, needs to use Foucault's analytics of power and Teubner's democratic proceduralization of dissent as well as Luhmann's ironies of autopoietic social systems to formulate a genealogy of legal normativity and its societal legitimation

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

From 'which rule of law?' to 'the rule of which law?': post-communist experiences of European legal integration

In the last two decades, post-communist states experienced a fascinating political journey, from using the rule of law concept in the most general way as an early signal of the coming constitutional and political transformation, to specifically (as EU Member States) addressing the problem of the supremacy of EU law and its effect on emerging national democracy and constitutional sovereignty. In other words, they moved from asking the question ‘which rule of law?’ to the question ‘the rule of which law?’ This move itself indicates the capacity of the rule of law, which is discussed in this article, to operate as a political ideal and a power technique at the same time. This duality of the rule of law operations will be outlined against the background of the process of European integration and its challenges to the traditional constitutional notions of sovereignty and legal unity. I shall argue that post-communist states initially had to embrace the substantive concept of the rule of law drawing on liberal and democratic values, which became a valid ticket for ‘The Return to Europe’ journey. However, the very process of European integration involved technical uses of law often challenging the substantive notion of the democratic rule of law and constitutionalism. The accession of post-communist states to the EU thus highlights the Union's more general problem and intrinsic tension between instrumental legitimacy by outcomes and substantive legitimacy by democratic procedures and values

Sociologie práva: vývoj a trendy po roce 1989

This article analyzes the history, development, & continuity of the sociology of law within the context of Czech social & legal science since 1989. The sociology of law is depicted as a branch of both social & legal science that has suffered greatly from different political discontinuities & ideological repression during the communist era. After the 1989 political changes, the weak tradition of the Czech sociology of law had to be reconstituted. This development is mainly typical of the law faculties of different Czech universities, while academics trained in general sociology & social theory rather continue to ignore the importance & social functions of the legal system in the process of the postcommunist transformation of Czech society