Prolegomena to Intellectual History of EU Constitutionalism: From a Constitution Without Theory to Theory Without the Constitution

You are cordially invited to attend a presentation by Professor Jan Komárek from the University of Copenhagen, entitled “Prolegomena to intellectual history of EU constitutionalism: From a constitution without theory to theory without the constitution.” 

Commentator: J.H.H. Weiler, University Professor, Director of The Jean Monnet Center.

Come and join what is bound to be a lively and interesting discussion.

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From the Author:

I set aside a non-trivial question of whether a theory of EU constitutional law is even possible (and if so, how such theory might look like).  I assume that the field of scholarly inquiry that is usually so called concerns the more general and deeper questions dealing with the foundational concepts of EU constitutional law, especially the nature of the EU and its legal order and its various elements. These would include e.g. the organisation of public power in the EU, the division of competences among the EU institutions and between the EU and its member states, the citizenship of the EU, the rights (and duties) of EU citizens, etc. The important feature of a theory consists in its ambition to analyse and understand the constitution rather than to make it and advocate for it. Only then, I believe, is it possible to demarcate the field of “constitutional theory” from other sorts of scholarly inquiry into constitutional law. 

Understood this way one can observe that while at the beginning of European integration there have been many claims about its constitutional nature made by various lawyers-activists (and diplomats) without much theorizing, today the situation seems to be the opposite: scholars theorize the legal order of the EU in constitutional terms without there being (almost any) demand from the political sphere for a European Constitution. Going through the stages of European constitutional theory the paper sheds light on this seeming paradox.