Sociological Constitutionalism

This landmark book provides the first systematic overview of the key scholarly contributions in an emerging field of research on constitutionalism: the sociology of constitutions. It presents chapters offering very different normative and methodological approaches to constitutions, ranging from analysis of national constitutional law, to research on transnational legal forms, to discussions of the constitutional impact of international human rights law. The book makes an important contribution to a series of wider debates - spanning constitutional law, legal theory, comparative constitutionalism, sociology, and political science - about the changing nature of constitutionalism. Researchers and students in constitutional law will gain a comprehensive appreciation of a diverse range of distinctively sociological approaches to constitutional law and an in-depth understanding of distinctive sociological dimensions of constitutions. The book offers insights into the sources of constitutional normativity in society and it proposes different sociological methods for addressing them.

Introduction; Sociological constitutionalism Paul Blokker and Chris Thornhill; Part I. National Constitutions and Sociological Method: 1. The social lives of constitutions Kim Lane Scheppele; 2. Towards a sociology of constitutional transformation – understanding South Africa's post-Apartheid constitutional order Heinz Klug; 3. Sociological constitutionalism – an evolutionary approach Hauke Brunkhorst; Part II. Constitutional Sociology between the National and the Transnational: 4. Constitutionalism between nation states and global law Chris Thornhill; 5. Politics and the political in sociological constitutionalism Paul Blokker; 6. Constitutions as symbolic orders – the cultural analysis of constitutionalism Hans Vorländer; 7. The rule of the market: economic constitutionalism understood sociologically Sabine Frerichs; Part III. Constitutional Law and Transnational Society: 8. From constitutionalism to transconstitutionalism: beyond constitutional nationalism, cosmopolitan constitutional unity and fragmentary constitutional pluralism Marcelo Neves; 9. Societal constitutionalism: nine variations on a theme by David Sciulli Gunther Teubner.

Paul Blokker is Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague. He is co-editor of the journal Social Imaginaries and International Advisory Board member of the European Journal of Social Theory. His publications include New Democracies in Crisis? A Comparative Constitutional Study of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, (2013). He is increasingly publishing on sociological constitutionalism, including 'EU Democratic Oversight and Domestic Deviation from the Rule of Law: Sociological Reflections', in: C. Closa and D. Kochenov (eds), Reinforcing the Rule of Law Oversight in the European Union (Cambridge, 2016).
Chris Thornhill is Professor of Law at the University of Manchester. His publications include: A Sociology of Constitutions: Constitutions and State Legitimacy in Historical-Sociological Perspective (Cambridge, 2011); A Sociology of Transnational Constitutions: Social Foundations of the Post-National Legal Structure (Cambridge, 2016); and as co-editor, Law and the Formation of Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2014). He is currently the holder of an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. His publications have appeared in many languages, including German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish. He is a member of the Academia Europaea.