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…

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

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

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.

Michal Krajewski presented to us The End of the Liberal Mind: Poland’s New Politics and Petr Agha The Light that Failed A Reckoning. …

The Second IMAGINE Workshop: Constitutional Imaginaries of Europe in Comparative History, with our guests Natasha Wheatley, Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček. Programme available here (pdf).

Jenny Orlando Skaerbaek presented to us Natasha Wheatley’s Law, Time, and Sovereignty in Central Europe: Imperial Constitutions, Historical Rights, and the Afterlives of Empire. …

23 September 2020, online: IMAGINE reading group – Marina Ban presented to us A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe (Oxford University Press 2016, 2018)…

12 March 2020, iCourts/online: IMAGINE reading group – we discussed Peter Gordon’s essay ‘What is Intellectual History?’ and Philipp Ther’s book Europe since 1989: A History (Princeton University Press 2016).

… as related to inequality, the rise of populism and the wider skepticism of the liberal order that governed domestic and global politics of Europe. The lecture series was produced as a collaboration between iCourts – the Centre of Excellence for International Courts and CEMES – the Centre for Modern European Studies…

In November 2018, the conference EU Constitutional Imagination: Between Ideology and Utopia unofficially opened works on the ERC-funded project which deals with European constitutional imaginaries. To this workshop, which is the first in a series to be organised in the context of IMAGINE, we have invited scholars who have…

Our IMAGINE project (unofficially) started already in November 2018, at a conference kindly supported by iCourts and co-funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Dreyers Fund. Conference volume will be published by the Oxford University Press in 2021. Links to the videos from the conference (YouTube): I.      CONSTITUTIONAL…

At this seminar we have discussed the book The Transformation of Europe: Twenty-Five Years On edited by Miguel Poiares Maduro and Marlene Wind (Cambridge University Press 2017). Programme of the event. Related IMAGINE Working Paper No. 10: Why read The Transformation of Europe today? On the limits…