1st Edition

Constitutional Imaginaries A Theory of European Societal Constitutionalism

By Jiří Přibáň Copyright 2022
176 Pages
by Routledge

176 Pages
by Routledge

176 Pages
by Routledge

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... Read more
 

Part I: Constitutional Imaginaries and Transvaluation of Values

Chapter 1: Constitutional Imaginaries: on potentia, potestas and auctoritas

Chapter 2: Transcendental Apparatus of Constitutional Values

Part II: Out of the Topos-Ethnos-Nomos Unity

Chapter 3: Out of Topos: The Nation State Imaginary in Post-National Society

Chapter 4: Out of Ethnos: Imagined Nations and Post-National Rights Culture

Chapter 5: Out of Nomos: The Circularity of Moral Universalism and Legal Particularism

Part III: European Constitutional Imaginaries

Chapter 6: The Imaginary of Legal Pluralism

Chapter 7: The Imaginary of Administrative Calculemus

Chapter 8: The Imaginary of Prosperous Imperium

Chapter 9: The Imaginary of Mobilised Communitas

Biography

Jiří Přibáň is Professor of Law, Cardiff University, UK. He graduated from Charles University in Prague (1989) where he was appointed professor of legal theory, philosophy and sociology in 2002. He was also visiting professor or scholar at European University Institute in Florence, New York University (Prague Office), University of California in Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Pretoria, The Flemish Academy in Brussels and University of New South Wales, Sydney.

'It is an important merit of this book to show that legal and political orders are not the resultof one or more dominating political forces, but of multiple societal forces. This holds true forthe EU legal and political order, too.'

Massimo Fichera, book review in Common Market Law Review

'Přibáň first investigates the imaginary unity of society and its legal system within the framework of the nation state and then debunks it by offering a way out of this unity of topos (space), ethnos (people), and nomos (the legal order). It is precisely the inquiry into this unity, its problems, and possible alternatives to it that constitutes the main contribution of Pribáň’s thinking as expressed in Constitutional Imaginaries.'

Lukáš Lev Červinka, book review in Journal of Law and Society