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…

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…

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 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…

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…

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.

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…

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

Online symposium organized by the Studio Europa Maastricht, Jan Komárek gave a paper on “Speaking of and for the Other: (Post-)communist Europe in European constitutional imaginaries” and Petr Agha on “The forgotten voices of the Velvet Revolution(s)”…

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)…

16 September, Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague, workshop (in Czech, online) České století v právu a politice [The Czech Century in law and politics], Jan Komárek presented paper “Vídeň-Moskva-Brusel-„Západ“: O nesamozřejmé české státnosti” [Vienna-Moscow-Brussels-“The West”: On the non-self-evident Czech statehood] and Petr Agha “Vzpomínka na hranice – patos, politika a populismus”…

Wojciech Sadurski has set for his latest book three goals: first, to provide a comprehensive account of the anti-constitutional populist backsliding in Poland; second, to explain its causes in a country ‘widely, and justifiably, applauded for its achievements in democratic consolidation, human rights, and judicial independence’ (p. vi); and third,…

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).

14 and 15 November 2019, The Swedish Network for European Legal Studies, Stockholm, conference 30 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Rule of Law in the European Union (programme-pdf), Jan Komárek presented paper The rule of law and liberal legalism in (the post-communist) Europe). Abstract: 1989 opened the possibility to…

The underlying assumption of constitutional pluralism, one of the dominant theories of EU legal scholarship, is a fundamental constitutional homogeneity amongst the EU Member States allowing for harmonious co‐existence and ‘constitutional tolerance’. This article challenges this assumption by demonstrating that the EU is characterised by a fundamental constitutional heterogeneity. It…

In response to the rise of authoritarianism in Poland and Hungary, several prominent scholars have called upon the EU to intervene in order to protect its constitutional values. One of the strongest albeit controversial arguments in favour of an intervention is that the EU is a form of transnational ‘militant…

Welcome to the first podcast brought to you by the IMAGINE Project, run by Professor Jan Komarek and hosted at the iCourts Centre of Excellence for International Courts.