Constitutional Pluralism in the EU

• The first full-length analysis of the major emerging branch of European constutional thought
• Provides a framework for understanding the substance of constitutional pluralism, its potential and limitations
• Aids the understanding of this often misunderstood body of scholarship on EU constitutionalism

Where does the law and political power of any given territory come from? The familiar model is from a single and hierarchical source of constitutional authority, a sovereign people and their constitution. How can this model account for the new Europe, however? Where state constitutions and the European Constitution, which are ultimately equally self-standing sources of constitutional authority, overlap heterarchically over a shared piece of territory. 

Constitutional pluralism is a new branch within constitutional thought that argues sovereignty is no longer the accurate and normatively superior constitutional foundation. It instead replaces this thought with its own foundation. It emerged on the basis of contributions by the leading EU constitutionalists and has now become the most dominant branch of European constitutional thought. Its claims have also overstepped the European context, suggesting that it offers historic advantages for further development of the idea of constitutionalism and world order as such.

This book offers the first overarching examination of constitutional pluralism in the European context. Comprehensively mapping the leading contributions to date, Klemen Jaklic offers a critical assessment of the problems and potential of pluralist theory. He argues that a refined version of constitutional pluralism should be considered the superior new approach within constitutional thought.

Readership: Scholars and students of European Law, Legal, Constitutional and Political Theory and international justice and democracy.