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…

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…

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…

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 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.

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…

I welcome Jan Komárek’s project to engage in a history of “European Constitutional Imaginaries” as seen through EU law landmark theories and most prominent authors. Some malicious minds would think of it as yet another avatar of the “scholastic bias” that structurally incites us scholars to transform our professional anxieties…