There is a difference between the normative reasons for endorsing global constitutionalism and the conditions determining its emergence. This article addresses the latter issue. Specifically, the article claims that global constitutionalism rests on an underexplored shift in constitutional imagination. To account for this claim, the article is structured in several parts. It begins by clarifying the meaning of ‘constitutional imagination’. In so doing it builds on Kant’s concept of imagination (‘Einbildungskraft’) and in its reception by Hannah Arendt. The article then illustrates the significance of constitutional imagination by focusing on two major developments in constitutional thinking. The first development involves the shift away from a narrative reconstruction of constitutional authority; the second points to a cosmopolitanisation of constitutional imagination.

The article develops a Kantian account of constitutional justice: the explication of those structural features of a legal system whose purpose is to optimise a polity’s capacity to achieve a Rightful condition. The People, in enacting a rights-based constitution, have placed their freedom in trust. Rights ground a system of reciprocal freedom among individuals, while conferring on officials the authority to make and enforce law, subject to constraints laid down by the Universal Principle of Right [UPR]. A constitutional court, the trustee of the regime, supervises the rights-regarding acts of all other officials, assesses the reasons officials give when they take decisions that burden rights, and invalidates those acts when reasons given to justify such burdens fail to meet the demands of the UPR. Although some rights will be expressed in absolute terms, most will be qualified by a limitation clause. In adjudicating qualified rights, the court can do no better than to adopt the proportionality principle. The UPR, operationalised through proportionality analysis, lays down a basic criterion for the legitimacy of all law. Because Public, International, and Cosmopolitan Right share certain micro-foundations in common, we can extend the analysis to transnational systems of rights protection.

Kant is regarded as one of the most influential cosmopolitan thinkers. Indeed his legacy still influences the contemporary legal and philosophical debate on this issue. But what is the Kantian conception of cosmopolitan law? In which terms does it arise out of his notion of a ‘right to visit’? How does it contribute to the construction of a ‘cosmopolitan constitution’? In this article the view is advanced that Kant was a legal constructivist. The argument assumes also that within Kant’s view of an ‘original community of interaction’, the justification of a cosmopolitan notion of authority allows exercises of freedom under a general scheme of right. Kant’s ‘cosmopolitan constitution’ depends therefore upon such rationale, as well as on the jurisdictional link that the right to visit determines in allowing individuals with the possibility to have a ‘place on earth’.

This article examines the ongoing conflict in the global monetary system as a struggle over norms of recognition between the US Federal Reserve and the emerging market economies. The analysis demonstrates that the Fed, though dominant actor in the global monetary system, adopts a US-centric perspective and relies upon inadequate economic constructs that misrecognise periphery members and justify a dismissal of criticisms of its monetary policy actions. The article shows how the adoption of recognition principles in reconstituting the monetary rules of the game would provide the Fed with an understanding of the political economic essentials of member countries, a greater awareness of potential harms of its monetary policy actions and the importance of cooperation in reducing conflict and mitigating episodes of monetary instability.

Civil disobedience has been theorised as an informal guardian of the constitution in democratic societies, but such accounts struggle to accommodate protest that has an international or global dimension. This article addresses this issue through offering a theory of civil disobedience as transnational disruption. Civil disobedience is ‘transnational’ insofar as it is an appeal to a national, international or global public that highlights failures to observe moral, political or legal values that are an appropriate source of normative authority in global contexts. Civil disobedience is ‘disruptive’ insofar as it obstructs the routine activities of relevant parties in order to draw attention to the demands of protesters. The core argument is that civil disobedience can uphold normative standards that have been incorporated into a dense network of treaties, conventions and global regulatory frameworks. It can thus make a modest but valuable contribution to the processes through which publics deliberate about the meaning and interpretation of these contested norms.