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Constitutionalism Without Constitution: Transnational Elites Between Political Mobilization and Legal Expertise in the Making of a Constitution for Europe (1940s−1960s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Antonin Cohen
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Abstract

By exploring how early political investments in favor of a European Constitution have been turned into a legal enterprise to constitutionalize the European treaties, this article analyzes the changing role of legal elites in the genesis of a European transnational order. At first, legal activities of constitution-making were closely linked to military issues and political mobilizations; later, the legal work of constitutionalization took a different path as a result of the process of differentiation of the European field of power and of the internal and contradictory logics of a newly created legal institution, the European Court of Justice (ECJ). By reconstructing the constitutionalization process, this article highlights the various types of elites then competing for the early definition of a European transnational order and, in particular, the capitals and representations of legal agents in the making of a Constitution for Europe.

Type
Symposium: Law, Lawyers, and Transnational Politics in the Production of Europe
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Winter 2007 , pp. 109 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2007 

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