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The Cosmopolitan Constitution
Originally the constitution was expected to express and channel popular sovereignty. It was the work of freedom, springing from and facilitating collective self-determination. After the Second World War this perspective changed: the modern constitution owes its authority not only to collective authorship, it also must commit itself credibly to human rights. Thus people recede into the background, and the national constitution becomes embedded into one or other system of 'peer review' among nations. This is what Alexander Somek argues is the creation of the cosmopolitan constitution. Reconstructing what he considers to be the three stages in the development of constitutionalism, he argues tha...
The Legal Relation
What is law? The usual answer is that the law is a system of norms. But this answer gives us at best half of the story. The law is a way of relating to one another. We do not do this as lovers or friends and not as people who are interested in obtaining guidance from moral insight. In a legal context, we are cast as 'character masks' (Marx), for example, as 'buyer' and 'seller' or 'landlord' and 'tenant'. We expect to have our claims respected simply because the law has given us rights. We do not want to give any other reason for our behavior than the fact that we have a legal right. Backing rights up with coercive threats indicates that we are willing to accept legal obligations unwillingly. This book offers a conceptual reconstruction of the legal relation on the basis of a critique of legal positivism.
Individualism
This innovative study examines the authority constituting the European Union. It claims that the type of power constituting a transnational regime transcends traditional forms of constitutional legality. It argues that the European constitutional project is out of step with the normative make-up of such a regime. It is to be feared, indeed, that the adoption of a Constitution for Europe would create a smokescreen obscuring a new and disturbing reality. Drawing on the ancient tradition of linking different types of political power with the composition of the citizen's soul, the book explains that a transnational regime is based on an understanding of citizenship that is different from that un...
Engineering Equality
Examining the rise of European anti-discrimination law, this book provides a critique of the focus on and implementation of, anti-discrimination law.
Individualism
Somek presents an original picture of the legitimacy underlying the European Union. Drawing on ancient and modern political philosophy, he argues that the transnational regime is rooted in an individualist social and intellectual culture, and depends on an apolitical, isolated citizenship.
The Concept of Liberal Democratic Law
This book develops a historical concept of liberal democratic law through readings of the pivotal twentieth century legal theoretical positions articulated in the work of Herbert Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Duncan Kennedy, Rudolf Smend, Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt. It assesses the jurisprudential projects and positions of these theorists against the background of a long history of European metaphysics from which the modern concept of liberal democratic law emerged. Two key narratives are central to this history of European political and legal metaphysics. Both concern the historical development of the concept of nomos that emerged in early Greek legal and political thought. The first concerns the...
Knowing What the Law Is
This book provides a selective and somewhat cheeky account of prominent positions in legal theory, such as American legal realism, modern legal positivism, sociological systems theory, institutionalism and critical legal studies. It presents a relational approach to law and a new perspective on legal sources. The book explores topics of legal theory in a playful manner. It is written and composed in a way that refutes the widespread prejudice that legal theory is a dreary subject, with a cast of characters that occasionally interact in order to illustrate the claims of the book. Legal experts claim to know what the law is. Legal theory-or jurisprudence-explores whether such claims are warranted. The discipline first emerged at the turn of the 20th century, when the self-confidence of both legal scholarship and judicial craftsmanship became severely shattered, but the crisis continues to this day.
Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy, Volume 1
The first volume of the Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy illustrates the remarkable scope of contemporary legal philosophy. It introduces methodological questions rooted in national academic discourses, discusses the origin of legal systems, and contrasts constitutionalist and monist approaches to the rule of law with the institutionalist approach most prominently and vigorously defended by Carl Schmitt. The issue at the core of these topics is which of these perspectives is more plausible in an age defined both by a 'postnational constellation' and the re-emergence of nationalist tendencies; an age in which the law increasingly cancels out borders only to see new frontiers erected.
Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy, Volume 3
The third volume of the Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy series focuses on one of the most fiercely contested issues in contemporary legal philosophy: the question of the importance of legal reasoning and how to properly engage with it. This book considers legal reasoning from two different angles: it revolves, on the one hand, around debates concerning interpretation and balancing, but it also asks, on the other, whom we ought to entrust with decision-making based on legal reasoning and how this relates to the very concept of law. The book approaches these underlying problems from a variety of perspectives and against the backdrop of different academic traditions, showcasing the rich landscape of critical debates around contemporary legal reasoning.
Constructing the Person in EU Law
The European Union places the 'individual' or person, 'at the heart of its activities'. It is a central concept in all of EU economics, politics, society and ethics. The 15 chapters in this innovative edited collection argue that EU law has had a transformative effect on this concept. The collection looks at the mechanisms used when 'constructing the person' in EU law. It goes beyond traditional literature on 'Europe and the Individual', exploring the question of personhood through critical and contextual perspectives. Constructing the Person in EU Law: Rights, Roles, Identities brings together contributions and debates from experts around Europe to this key question.
