Develops a critical theory of postnational constitutionalism at a time when the project of integrating Europe's peoples through the rule of law is faltering. Spanning many bodies of EU jurisprudence, Linden-Retek devotes specific attention to migration and asylum--struggles where questions of solidarity and belonging are most acute.

Leading scholars of European constitutionalism highlight different facets of the constitutional discussion.

Despite its centrality to academic discussions of power and influence, there is little consensus in legal scholarship over what constitutes an actor in rule-making. This book explores the range of actors involved in rule-making within European Union law and Public International law, and focuses especially on actors that are often overlooked by formative and doctrinal approaches. Drawing together contributions from many scholars in various fields the book examines such issues as the accommodation of new actors in the process of postnational rule-making, the visibility or covertness of actors within the process, and the role of social acceptance and legitimacy in postnational rule-making. In its endeavour to render and examine the work and effect of actors often side-lined in the study of postnational rule-making, this book will be of great use and interest to students and scholars of EU law, international law and socio-legal studies.

This book offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the concept of sovereignty. This book outlines the origins, context and evolution of the concept of sovereignty as an essential attribute of the modern territorial State since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The book identifies two competing traditions of the concept of sovereignty; the tradition inaugurated by Jean Bodin in 1576 in his work The Six Books of the Commonwealth and another that started with Johannes Althusius in 1603, considered the father of federal theory, in his less known work Politica. In order to understand the concept of sovereignty, it is necessary to understand the constitutional rules of each international system and the fact that the States are the primary polities in the international arena. The rise of International Organizations and the increasing institutionalization of the international system challenges this state-centric world, considering their exercise of sovereign powers. Following authors such as Daniel Elazar, the book discusses the importance of federalism as political theory, which offers a different understanding of the concept of sovereignty. The book discusses the European Union as a paradigmatic case of a postmodern confederation, which challenges the notion of sovereignty as an absolute and exclusive statehood attribute. Furthermore, the reconceptualization of sovereignty in International Law should consider the rise of regional and functional legal orders, the different understandings of sovereignty offered by the federalist tradition and the processes of deterritorialization and disaggregation of authority. The book concludes with the idea that concept of sovereignty in International Law should be seen as a flexible concept which is not an exclusive attribute of the modern territorial state. This book is required reading for all interested in the history and the evolution of the concept of sovereignty.

This book offers new perspectives and insights into the functioning of mechanisms utilised by global constitutionalism.

Part one of Volume 4 (2013) of the European Yearbook of International Economic Law offers a special focus on recent developments in international competition policy and law. International competition law has only begun to emerge as a distinct subfield of international economic law in recent years, even though international agreements on competition co-operation date back to the 1970s. Competition law became a prominent subject of political and academic debates in the late 1990s when competition and trade were discussed as one of the Singapore issues in the WTO. Today, international competition law is a complex and multi-layered system of rules and principles encompassing not only the external application of domestic competition law and traditional bilateral co-operation agreements, but also competition provisions in regional trade agreements and non-binding guidelines and standards. Furthermore, the relevance of competition law for developing countries and the relationship between competition law and public services are the subject of heated debates. The contributions to this volume reflect the growing diversity of the issues and elements of international competition law. Part two presents analytical reports on the developments of the regional integration processes in North America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia as well as on the treaty practice of the European Union. Part three covers the legal and political developments in major international organizations that deal with international economic law, namely the IMF, WCO, WTO, WIPO, ICSID and UNCTAD. Lastly, part four offers book reviews of recent works in the field of international economic law.

The concept of constituent power plays a major part in modern political and legal theory— in how we think about the political. This book tackles the twofold issue of public authority and public autonomy in the modern conception of the political by analysing the notion of constituent power, its function in the modern political apparatus, and debates about its meaning and function in our own context. Focusing on contemporary debates on constitutionalism "beyond" the state, Geneviève Nootens assesses the prospects for recasting the notion of constituent power in a polycentric setting that challenges state sovereignty as embodying the autonomy of the political. She argues that constituent power belongs with the conceptual apparatus of a theory of government peculiar to a statist way of knowing, and being into, the world, and that it is too much dependent upon the statist framework for it to have critical purchase on the new mappings of public authority. Nootens stresses the critical need to frame public authority appropriately if we are to conceptualize a conception of collective political agency that can sustain public autonomy in the current era. Constituent Power Beyond the State will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, democratic theory, law, and constitutionalism.

This book addresses the changing constitutional framework of the EU and the changing patterns of governance within this complex polity.

This book provides insights into the viability of the idea of global constitution. Global constitutionalism has emerged as an alternative paradigm for international law. However, in view of the complex and varied structure of contemporary constitutionalism, in reality it is extremely difficult to use constitutional law to provide a new paradigm for international law. The book argues that the cultural paradigm can offer functional tools for the global constitutionalism discourse. In other words, global constitutionalism could be handled in the context of a global “constitutional culture” instead of a global constitution. This would provide a more realistic basis for discussing global constitutionalization of a society as diverse as the international community, where a globalized polity and a globalized legal system have not yet been achieved.

Examines and compares East Asian and European perspectives of Global Constitutionalism.