This books provides a contextual analysis of the constitution of the
European Union which, unlike most constitutions, does not belong to a
state. Rather, the EU is an international organization that has moved
beyond the features of international law into a terrain very close to
the municipal law of federal states. Many features we take for granted
in nation-states are non-existent, or contested, in the Union. There is
no European Union constitutional text in the proper sense; the
"Constitutional Treaty" signed by the Member States in 2004 failed
spectacularly in the process of popular ratification. The Union's
founding texts were international treaties - international law, not
constitutional law. And yet, over time, legal doctrine put into place by
the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has led to constitutional
attributes of Union law, and political practice, led by the Commission,
has mirrored these attributes, complementing a de facto
constitutionalist environment. As a consequence, we have seen a steady
re-ordering of the functional boundaries of the Member States, followed
by a nascent re-ordering of the imagined boundaries of political
community and self. All of this is constitutionalism writ large: legal
doctrines, institutional arrangements, political practices, and their
implications for legitimacy, democracy, and political self-imagination,
and together they form the subject of this fascinating book.
