Two edited volumes and one monograph were written during the six years of the project. All of them are available open access. While the first, European constitutional imaginaries: Between ideology and utopia (OUP 2024) set the stage for the whole project and let us engage with colleagues focusing on…

During the six years of IMAGINE (thanks to the extension granted due to Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions on the activities that we hoped to pursue), we have organized one major conference in Copenhagen (6-7 October 2022, Copenhagen: Constitutional imaginaries of Europe), which followed an unofficial kick-off conference that…

During the six years of the project, we participated in numerous “related events” – conferences, workshops or simple paper presentations, where we could engage with our colleagues interested in our approach to European constitutionalism. Altogether, we counted over 50 such events. For example, we were extremely delighted to have…

The workshop will focus on the theoretical part of Jan Komárek’s book (in progress) The Imaginary Factory: Constitutional Scholars and EUrope’s Constitutionalism (to be published by Cambridge University Press). It will bring together Professor Paul Kahn, whose “cultural study of law” has inspired the general methodological orientation of the project,…

Program Tuesday 10 December 13h30 | Reception 14h | Local Meanings of EU Law: What’s the point and what methods? Afroditi Marketou (University Paris-Est Creteil) Joana Mendes (University of Luxembourg) Bruno De Witte (University of Maastricht and EUI) Jan Komarek (University of Copenhagen)…

Thanks to Prof. Fernanda Nicola, Jan could present his book project on Imaginary Factory at the American University, Washington College of Law and get comments from: Daniela Caruso, Professor of law emerita, Boston University School of Law Bojan Bugarič, Professor of law, University of Sheffield School of Law Bill Davies,…

The University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression: Exploring Academic Freedom with Professor David Rabban Join the Chicago Forum for a conversation about academic freedom on college campuses with Professor David Rabban. Rabban is the Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair…

The proposal on our last book, The Imaginary Factory: Constitutional Scholars and Europe’s Constitutionalism by Jan Komárek, has been accepted by Cambridge University Press (and publishing contract concluded).

LSE Law School, Lunch Seminar Jan Komárek: The imaginary factory: Constitutional scholars and EUrope’s constitutionalism Blurb: The book, whose introductory chapter will be presented at the seminar, examines how constitutional scholars and their ideas on European integration contributed to making constitutionalism the key imaginary during the time of Europe’s deep…

From the conference website: The “Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives” research project studies the rise of authoritarian governments in East Central Europe and far right and populist movements across Europe that has sparked concern that the liberal democratic order established…

  This chapter, which will appear in the forthcoming Research Handbook on EU Constitutional Law (edited by Leonard Besselink, Nicola Lupo and Mattias Wendel), provides an overview of the development of EU constitutional theory – the field of scholarly inquiry concerned with the broader and deeper questions of the basic…

  This chapter introduces the whole volume, explaining briefly the concept of constitutional imaginary first, based on our previous work, and also the key aim of the book: to “turn the tables” between the “old” and post-communist Europe, letting the latter to speak for itself and define the terms of…

“The Future of Public Law: Resilience, Sustainability and Artificial Intelligence”, Madrid, Spain (July 8-10), IE Law School Jan Komárek convened one panel on “The infrastructure of the Digital Public Sphere of European Law” Description: While European law professors have been blogging and tweeting for a while, only recently has…

It is a rare thing for an historian to have access to sources which chart the entire history of a state, from planned creation to pre-meditated extinction. Nor is every state’s constitutional and political history as varied as that of Czechoslovakia, which was founded on 28 October 1918 and ceased…

  The development of democratic constitutionalism in Portugal in the last (almost) 50 years has been marked by some important debates, which still influence different views and interpretations of the Constitution. I would like to highlight two of them: first, a discussion of the nature and limits of the ‘constitutional…

  It has been said that countries in East-Central Europe have their own brand of constitutionalism which celebrates the idea of national sovereignty. I shall argue that, when the question of sovereignty is treated in the framework of cultural imaginaries, we realise that this region’s constitutionalism is actually much less…

This chapter builds on the assumption that constitutional references to the historical constitution can contribute to the community building process in Hungary. While this assumption itself might be contended, this paper puts aside the question whether the Hungarian historical constitution could be revived in legal terms or whether it could…

Mountain seminar is a regular gathering of scholars interested in public law in Europe (very broadly conceived) founded by Marco Dani and Jan Komárek in 2017. This year Jan presented his book project tentatively titled The rise and fall of European constitutionalism: from utopia to ideology, 1980-2009. It will be…

The French imaginary is a Republican imaginary that is premised on political liberty. The red thread across the political thought and the various constitutions of France has been the pursuit of the ideal political regime that would best realise political liberty and the general interest. That approach stands in stark…

  The European Union (EU) is imbued by the legacy of the empire. Practically all of its Member States have been either former colonial powers or former colonial subjects. The eastern part of the EU has a specific baggage and legacy that it brings to the EU. After 1989 the…

  The project of constitutional democracy and the rule of law concept served as a powerful unifying platform for political compromise during the liberal democratic transformation after 1989. Today’s challenge to the liberal rule of law calls for re-evaluating our understanding of that period. To provide a deeper historical perspective,…

Organised by the Common Law Society in Prague  at the Faculty of Law, Charles University. Komárek’s lecture was on “Právní vědci v digitální sféře: zachrání svět (nebo alespoň Evropu)?”.

Thanks to the kind invitation of Professor Armin von Bogdandy, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Jan Komárek could present there his draft reply to Alexander Somek and Elisabeth Paar, ‘Europe’s political constitution’, which critically engaged some of the arguments that Komárek…

This is Jan Komárek’s reply to the contributions to the EJLS’s symposium on his edited book, European constitutional imaginaries: Between ideology and utopia (OUP 2024). The article is available open access here [pdf].

Commentator: J.H.H. Weiler, University Professor, Director of The Jean Monnet Center From the Author: I set aside a non-trivial question of whether a theory of EU constitutional law is even possible (and if so, how such theory might look like).  I assume that the field of scholarly inquiry that is…

Can (and should) constitutional scholars save liberal democracy? Lessons from Europe and the US Jan Komárek (University of Copenhagen) and Bernard Harcourt (Columbia University) in conversation Moderated by Turkuler Isiksel (Columbia University) Scholars of law and social science face ever-increasing pressure to be useful to society “outside the ivory tower”.

Cambridge University Press will publish our book European Constitutionalism the Other Way Round: From the Periphery to the Centre in October 2025. It will be available open access. All its chapters were published as working papers. To make the content of the book available, we have provided links to…

The EUI Constitutionalism and Politics Working Group organises an event featuring a discussion on Professor Jan Komárek’s edited volume, European Constitutional Imaginaries: Between Ideology and Utopia. How can the EU be made legitimate and sustainable through (constitutional) law? And what is the role of constitutional lawyers and their ideas…

  The traditional narratives of Austrian constitutional law are evolving. Long decried by scholars and practitioners to be “in ruins”, the Austrian Constitution has recently been lauded as “elegant and beautiful” by Austria’s President, thus attempting a paradigm shift in the Austrian public’s perception of its constitution. While some textbooks…

  This chapter explores the transforming constitutional imaginary of the Scandinavian welfare states. Suggesting that the Nordic countries shared a distinctive interpretation of the democratic ideals during the heydays of the social democratic welfare state, the chapter argues that the breakthrough of neoliberalism has fundamentally transformed the Nordic constitutional imaginary.

  The chapter explores how alternative futures were imagined in the late state-socialist system, using Soviet Estonia as a case study during the mid-perestroika period in the Soviet Union. In 1987–88, Estonian reformist intellectuals and experts envisioned Estonia in multiple scenarios like an economically “self-manageable” republic within a renewed Soviet…

On the basis of Ackerman’s established classification of legitimate constitutional pathways (revolutionary, establishment and elite), this chapter considers the boundaries of the said pathways, particularly those of the revolutionary and the elite models. I do so by means of considering two case studies: Poland (an example of the revolutionary pathway…

  The paper intends to explore the roots of Polish ‘constitutional crisis’ by utilising the concept of constitutional drift. The paper argues that while Polish 1997 Constitution contains provisions that would enable for interpreting it by using the lenses of Sciulli’s societal constitutionalism (which we call the ‘societal imaginary’), such…

  Throughout history, reference to the historical constitution of Hungary, which was the uncodified constitution of the state for a thousand years, was used to achieve different and sometimes conflicting goals. Since 2012, the historical constitution has become a constitutional concept after decades of abandonment. It appears in the Fundamental…

  The article is interested in the ways that Estonia’s self-perception changed in relation to Europe over the Soviet years and during the re-establishment of the independent state. More specifically, the focus is on co-articulating the “Soviet question” in relation to the “European question”: in what ways did the decades…

On the invitation of Prof. David Singh Grewal, with the Berkeley Law School Law and Political Economy Society, “Network for a New Political Economy,” and the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program.

  The aim of this chapter is to offer a study of the position of Europe (and European integration) in the Italian constitutional imagination. The argument tracks three moments which have shaped the way European integration (and more generally the horizon of European political unity) has been perceived by Italian…

Panel “Researching the European Court of Justice” Chair: Fernanda Nicola (American University) Discussant: Daniela Caruso (Boston University) Judicial Biography and the History of EU Law by Will Phelan (Trinity College Dublin) “In This Bureaucratic Silence EU Law Dies:” Fieldwork and the (Non)-Practice of EU Law in National Courts by…

On the invitation of Paul Linden Retek, the long-time colleague (if from afar) of Jan’s, who contributed to our book and also with a working paper.  …

Abstract: Integration through law tends to be assessed from the perspective of the effects it produces, but more than a set of rules, EU law is also a language which frames the project of integration on its own terms. From a legal perspective, European integration is first and an exercise…

Abstract: Scholars have intensely debated the justiciability of constitutional social rights, an essential aspect of transformative constitutionalism in Central and Eastern Europe. This article examines the reasons for displacing social rights in the Polish constitutional discourse and the obstacles in the way of these rights’ gaining normative substance. Polish society…

The Meaning of EU Law – Workshop on Law’s Socio-Political and Economic Significance Just like with the development of any political community, the building of a political Europe cannot succeed by adopting rules alone. It also requires the formation of a certain language and discourse through which the…

This is the first major outcome of our project: collective volume on European constitutional imaginaries, published by the Oxford University Press. It results from our first conference and the follow-up workshop – and also intensive editorial work, which sought to make it a coherent whole, not “just” a…

Abstract: In this seminar, Jakob Rendl will analyse the legal nature of the Treaties of the European Union through the lens of the theory of international treaty. Commonly, it is said that the EU-Treaties cannot satisfactorily be described by means of international legal categories. Allegedly, the transfer of the right…

Making a constitution is about making political identity and creating political community. This paper investigates how the Hungarian Fundamental Law (entered into force in 2012) and its amendments have been based on constant enemy creation. In the first section, the theoretical framework of enemy- and identity construction of the Orbán…

Vicarious identification, or ‘living through another’ refers to the way actors appropriate the achievements and experiences of others to gain a sense of purpose, identity and self-esteem. This chapter proposes that vicarious identification with ‘Europe’ has been constitutive for Estonia’s pooling of important aspects of its sovereign power with the…

Britain’s constitutional evolution falls within the mainstream of European constitutional traditions, but the gulf between its governing practices and those adopted in the European mainstream has grown progressively wider. While most European nation-states have adopted written constitutions at critical moments of modern history, Britain continues to adhere to the traditional…

The Polish constitutional imaginary is an eclectic set of ideas, often contradicting or potentially conflicting with each other. This feature is partly the result of the complexity of Polish history, the leitmotif of which has revolved around regaining and maintaining independence for several centuries. This chapter analyses the relationship between…

In European constitutional imaginaries: Between ideology and utopia (forthcoming in the OUP) a group of international scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds (constitutional law and theory, political theory, sociology and philosophy) examined the concept of constitutional imaginary: a set of ideas and beliefs that help to motivate and justify the practice…

Since 2015 the Law and Justice government has significantly altered the composition of the Polish Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the National Council of Judiciary. It has also expanded the power of the executive branch in relation to the courts. This process – which the majority of scholars and…

Contrary to the widespread narrative in both Polish and European constitutional law discourse, this chapter argues that Polish constitutional law theory, as it evolved in the years 1944-1989, was an active subject rather than a passive object in the process of the transition from the authoritarian socialism to constitutional democracy.

The study presents the impact of historical traditions on the making and application of law through a specific example. The regulation of nationality, a pivotal field of constitutional law, is considered a sovereign right of the Hungarian state, which is exercised in line with Article G) of the Fundamental Law…

There are, indeed, at least two cultures of knowing, with a certain claim to authority, what the law is. Each comprises, within itself, a peculiar pair of opposites. One of these cultures is, possibly, continental European, while the other is, most definitely, US American. In both, legal scholarship comes in…

This article seeks to establish which scholars of European constitutional law produced particularly influential “constitutional imaginaries” – coherent visions of the EU and its legal and political order, anchored in some (explicit or not) ideology. After introducing the broader research agenda, within which this article is situated, part II discusses…

This paper aims to cast light on the relative silence of French scholarship in the contemporary transnational debate about EU constitutional matters. It seeks to understand why, over time, French scholarship has increasingly been muted. The argument put forward to explain this observation rests on the history of the professional…

The title of this article refers to a passage in the book Brokering Europe by Antoine Vauchez who wrote that ‘the reinvention [of European law] that we can conveniently place under the banner the “constitutionalization of Europe” flourished most particularly in the hills of Fiesole between Badia Fiesolana and the…

Panel discussion on Jiří Přibáň’s Constitutional Imaginaries: A Theory of European Societal Constitutionalism (Routledge 2022) was part of the 2022 ICON•S Annual Conference on Global Problems and Prospects in Public Law. Jan Komárek discussed the book with Bojan Bugarič, Kalypso Nicolaidis and Signe Larsen.

Workshop organised by Professor Alexander Somek to discuss The Redress of Law: Globalisation, Constitutionalism and Market Capture (Cambridge University Press 2021) by Emilios Christodoulidis – flyer [pdf] .

Paper considered the relationship between EU law academia and the judiciary, as exemplified by the work of Pierre Pescatore. The conference, organised by the MPI Luxembourg for Procedural Law and the University of Luxembourg, sought to promote engagement with Pesctore’s work, in particular with his construction of the Law of…

Presentation contributed to the series of online seminars on “Controversies over Methods in EU Law “, organized by Vincent Réveillère  at the University of Aix-Marseille by the CERIC (Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationales et Communautaires) and the LTD (Laboratoire de Théorie du Droit) [pdf].

Abstract: When accounting for why elections, voting, and political representation are meaningful and valuable practices, political theorists tend to assume that the political system in which these institutions occur is broadly democratic. However, authoritarian regimes also make use of these institutions. Furthermore, recent empirical research shows that elections in “hybrid,”…

Interdisciplinary PhD Programme “Society of the Future”, Jagiellonian University in Krakow Programme and course assignments here [pdf].

Organized by the Czech Society for European and Comparative Law, Czech Republic; Discussion around the themes raised in my article “Freedom and Power of European Constitutional Scholarship” (2021) 17 European Constitutional Law Review 422 – 441 with colleagues from the Czech Republic.

IMAGINing Together brings colleagues from projects that pursue agenda close to ours: thinking broadly about Europe, its law and history. This time we meet with EuroStorie, the Centre of Excellence based in Helsinki, which critically investigates the foundations of the European narrative about a shared heritage of law, values…

The fourth of our “local workshops” took place in Prague on 4 March 2022, convened by Zuzana Vikarská. Programme (mostly in Czech) here: [pdf].

Jan Komárek presented paper entitled “From legitimacy to ideology: towards ideology critique of European constitutionalism” at the webinar organised jointly by Marco Dani, Marco Goldoni, Agustín J. Menéndez in the course of the preparation of their edited volume, which will discuss Bruce Ackermann’s Revolutionary constitutions: charismatic leadership and the rule…

Legal theorists and sociologists have recently used the term ‘constitutional imaginary’ as a set of ideas and beliefs that help to motivate and justify the practice of authority. They provide this authority with an overarching sense and purpose recognised by those governed as legitimate. Constitutional orders may be based on…

Abstract: Our private lives have appeared all-encompassing during the pandemic. Confined at home, other dimensions of life seem to have become mere appendages to them. This may endure if more work, purchasing and consumption is done from home, and more healthcare and social care provided to those at home. This has…

The IMAGINE Estonian workshop focuses on some of the most salient issues of the Estonian belonging to Europe or “somewhere else” – the forever liminal space between the East and the West and its repercussions for both Estonia and Europe. It takes a multidisciplinary and historically broad approach to the…

What is it that European constitutional scholars are, and should be, pursuing? The noble answer would be: knowledge, as all scholars do. However, they do much more, undoubtedly because of the nature of their discipline. Lawyers have always been close to power. This has consequences for the way they conduct their…

Team IMAGINE took part in the Annual Danish European Association- European Community Studies Association Conference 2021, organised by our iCourts colleagues Shai Dothan & Juan A. Mayoral. We presented a panel entitled “Exploring European constitutional imaginary’s OTHER” – details here (pdf). Our panel was kindly chaired by Jakob…

The workshop explores continuous presence of historical narratives in Hungarian constitutionalism. It analyzes this problem by mapping the historical roots of political and legal thinking about these narratives, including constitutional debates of 18th and 19th centuries, and the emergence of the concept of Hungary’s historical constitution. The presentation further delve…

This interview follows up on our Third IMAGINE Workshop “Freedom and power of European constitutional scholarship”, where Joana Mendes chaired one of the panels. In this conversation, we talk about the intellectual impact of the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) on the building of the European Union’s constitutional imaginary,…

This paper is the introductory chapter to Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe (OUP 2021). The book recounts the transformation of Europe from the interwar era until the euro crisis, using the tools of constitutional analysis and critical theory. Interwar liberalism, rocked by mass politics and social inequality,…

On 29 September Birgit Aasa presents her paper on “Mutual Trust and the Rule of Law” at the conference “The Rule of Law Crisis in Europe – Historical and Procedural Aspects” in Lund. In case you want to know more about the paper and Birgit’s research, you can get…

This interview follows up on our Third IMAGINE Workshop “Freedom and power of European constitutional scholarship”, where Urska Sadl chaired one of the panels. Urska is widely known as a scholar who has brought empirical methods to the study of the European Court of Justice. We have talked about…

This interview follows up on our Third IMAGINE Workshop “Freedom and power of European constitutional scholarship”, where Alexander Somek (Professor of Legal Philosophy, University of Vienna Faculty of Law) gave an introductory paper. Jan Komárek talks with Somek about what it means to be a “legal academic”, how…

Jan Komárek presented his forthcoming paper on “Freedom and Power of European Constitutional Scholarship” to colleagues at the Center for Global Constitutionalism, part of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

Exploring European constitutional imaginary‘s OTHER This panel brings together the team of people working on the ERC-funded project IMAGINE – European Constitutional Imaginaries: Utopias, Ideologies and the Other. We will discuss the key assumptions of the project and specific case studies focused on how the constitutional imaginaries of Europe have…

On Thursday, 10 June Birgit Aasa will present her paper on ‘Mutual Trust and Rule of Law in the EU – an Uneasy Relationship’, the following day Michał Krajewski will talk on ‘The Many Faces of the Rule of Law: The Assets of EU Extra-Judicial Review Mechanisms’. Details…

We met colleagues from Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law directed by Armin von Bogdandy.

Due illness, Jan Komárek only delivered (in writing) his paper “From legitimacy to ideology: towards ideology critique of European constitutionalism” at the conference The legitimacy of European constitutional orders: Questioning the revolutionary, establishment and elite pathways, held on 24-28 May 2021 at the Faculty of Law, University of Trento…

The presentation explores the language of early European Law: The negotiators of the ECSC Treaty imagined inventing a new legal form of international cooperation. The word they came up with was ‘supranationality’. This neologism served as the starting signal for a fierce competition for semantics, and the semantic field connected…

The Working Group is generously funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission via the Jean Monnet Chair in EU Politics and Law and the EUROGOV Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, both at Trinity College Dublin. Meeting was chaired by Stephen Coutts.

Link to the podcast @ De Nederlandse Vereniging voor Europees Recht. Is EU law still supreme? Most national high courts have formulated some limits on the absolute supremacy claimed by EU law. Only three courts so far have actually declared an EU act to be ultra vires, openly denying…

Constitutional law scholarship has always been close to public power. Constitutional lawyers have contributed to the legitimacy of the State, supported its transformations and influenced or served those in power through their arguments and positions about constitutional law. EU constitutional scholarship is not an exception. The Third IMAGINE workshop analysed…

Welcome to the third podcast brought to you by the IMAGINE Project, run by Professor Jan Komarek and hosted at the iCourts Centre of Excellence for International Courts, University of Copenhagen. IMAGINE works on the Intellectual History of European Constitutional Imaginaries. Today, we will talk to another postdoc working at…

Marina Bán and Michał Krajewski discussed the book Constitutionalism under Stress: Essays in Honour of Wojciech Sadurski.

Petr Agha presented “The Forgotten Voices of the Velvet Revolution(s)” at a webinar organised as part of  ‘Dissenting Voices. European thought between tradition and rupture’, Jan Komárek commented.

We met colleagues from EuroStorie: the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives, based at the University of Helsinki (funded by the Academy of Finland) and led by Kaius Tuori, the author of a fascinating new book, Empire of Law: Nazi Germany, Exile Scholars and…

Since 2008, Hungary and Poland have developed a distinctive populist economic program, which has begun to spread to other Central and East European Countries (CEECs). This article develops a theory of the political economy of populism in CEECs, arguing that these countries’ dependence on foreign capital constrained them to follow…

Juan A. Mayoral, holder of the EUPoLex Chair, provided participants with insight into the design and implementation of interviews. Here interviews are used to provide an empirically based understanding of the social fabric in which legal practices are embedded and of the very impact of the law in…

Today we met Michał Paździora and Michał Stambulski, who are about to start a fascinating project on Legal Epistemic Authority in Poland. Development and Dynamics 1982-2020 funded by the Polish National Science Centre.

Jan Komárek presented our project to the working group on constitutional law at the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University in Brno (online).

14 December, The Academic Forum of the New University: Revitalization of EU Constitutionalism, Jan Komárek discussed (with Gráinne de Búrca and Neil Walker) Matej Abelj’s IMAGINE Working Paper No. 9; video from the Forum…

Welcome to the podcast brought to you by the IMAGINE Project, run by Professor Jan Komárek and hosted at the iCourts Centre of Excellence for International Courts, University of Copenhagen. IMAGINE works on the Intellectual History of European Constitutional Imaginaries. In this podcast, Marina Ban – a post-doc working with…