Overview

Transconstitutionalism is a concept used to describe what happens to constitutional law when it is emancipated from the state, in which can be found the origins of constitutional law. Transconstitutionalism does not exist because a multitude of new constitutions have appeared, but because other legal orders are now implicated in resolving basic constitutional problems. A transconstitutional problem entails a constitutional issue whose solution may involve national, international, supranational and transnational courts or arbitral tribunals, as well as native local legal institutions. Transconstitutionalism does not take any single legal order or type of order as a starting-point or ultima ratio. It rejects both nation-statism and internationalism, supranationalism, transnationalism and localism as privileged spaces for solving constitutional problems. The transconstitutional model avoids the dilemma of 'monism versus pluralism'. From the standpoint of transconstitutionalism, a plurality of legal orders entails a complementary and conflicting relationship between identity and alterity: constitutional identity is rearticulated on the basis of alterity. Rather than seeking a 'Herculean Constitution', transconstitutionalism tackles the many-headed Hydra of constitutionalism, always looking for the blind spot in one legal system and reflecting it back against the many others found in the world's legal orders.

Full Product Details

Author:   Marcelo Neves ,  Kevin Mundy
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Hart Publishing
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.540kg
ISBN:  

9781849464185

ISBN 10:   1849464189
Pages:   246
Publication Date:   01 May 2013
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Theoretical Background I. Constitution as Metaphor? II. The Premodern Hierarchical Social Formation III. The Transition Period: Charters of Freedom or Political Settlements IV. Multicentric Modern Society V. From Structural Couplings to Transversal Rationality 2. From Transversal Constitution . . . I. The Constitution of Constitutionalism II. The Transversal Constitution of the Constitutional State III. Transversal Constitutions beyond the State? 3. . . . to Transconstitutionalism between Legal Orders I. Transconstitutionalism between Legal Orders as a Model for Treating Constitutional Problems II. Transconstitutionalism between International Public Law and State Law III. Transconstitutionalism between Supranational Law and State Law IV. Transconstitutionalism between State Legal Orders V. Transconstitutionalism between State and Transnational Legal Orders VI. Transconstitutionalism between State Legal Orders and Extra-state Local Orders VII. Transconstitutionalism between Supranational Law and International Law 4. Transconstitutionalism in a 'Multilevel' or Multicentric World Legal System I. Multiangle Transconstitutionalism between Orders of the Same Kind and Orders of Different Kinds II. Pluridimensional Transconstitutionalism of Human Rights III. Outlines of a Methodology of Transconstitutionalism 5. Excursus: Limits and Possibilities of Transconstitutionalism in Terms of Empirical Conditions, Functional Requirement and Normative Claim I. Empirical Conditions: Transconstitutionalism versus Asymmetry of the Forms of Law II. Functional Requirement: Beyond Constitutional Utopia and Fragmentation - Promoting a 'Differentiated Communication Order' (System Integration) III. Normative Claim: Beyond Hegemony and Community - Promoting Inclusion ('Social Integration') Final Comment: The Other Can See Your Blind Spot

Reviews

...the book combines a thorough (systems) theoretical understanding of constitutional law and world society with a detailed analysis of its implications for concrete cases in this highly complex field. The author deals with a rich pool of theoretical scholarship, including Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner, Hans Kelsen, Martti Koskenniemi, and Anne-Marie Slaughter; but even more importantly for the reader, he also draws on a rich pool of examples of transconstitutional problems. Thus, the book gives a new impulse to the ongoing debate on global constitutional law. It helps practitioners, especially constitutional judges, to comprehend the social conflicts that (invisibly) determine their decisions. For scholars, the book provides an example of the operationalization of system theory to address normative problems in a multicentric world. -- Marie Hesselbarth * International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol 11, No 4 *

.the book combines a thorough (systems) theoretical understanding of constitutional law and world society with a detailed analysis of its implications for concrete cases in this highly complex field. The author deals with a rich pool of theoretical scholarship, including Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner, Hans Kelsen, Martti Koskenniemi, and Anne-Marie Slaughter; but even more importantly for the reader, he also draws on a rich pool of examples of transconstitutional problems. Thus, the book gives a new impulse to the ongoing debate on global constitutional law. It helps practitioners, especially constitutional judges, to comprehend the social conflicts that (invisibly) determine their decisions. For scholars, the book provides an example of the operationalization of system theory to address normative problems in a multicentric world. Marie Hesselbarth International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol 11, No 4, October 2013

…the book combines a thorough (systems) theoretical understanding of constitutional law and world society with a detailed analysis of its implications for concrete cases in this highly complex field. The author deals with a rich pool of theoretical scholarship, including Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner, Hans Kelsen, Martti Koskenniemi, and Anne-Marie Slaughter; but even more importantly for the reader, he also draws on a rich pool of examples of transconstitutional problems. Thus, the book gives a new impulse to the ongoing debate on global constitutional law. It helps practitioners, especially constitutional judges, to comprehend the social conflicts that (invisibly) determine their decisions. For scholars, the book provides an example of the operationalization of system theory to address normative problems in a multicentric world. -- Marie Hesselbarth * International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol 11, No 4 *

Author Information

Marcelo Neves is Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory at the University of Brasilia. He has previously taught and studied at the European University Institute in Florence, the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, the London School of Economics, and at the universities of Bremen, Fribourg and Flensburg.

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