No.5/04

Symposium

Altneuland: The EU Constitution in a Contextual Perspective

A Conference Organized by
the Hauser Global Law School Program and the Jean Monnet Center for
International and Regional Economic Law & Justice,
New York University School of Law
Jointly With the
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at
Princeton University

Altneuland: The European Constitutional Terrain

It is in many respects a New Land - for the first time the Union is openly, officially using the word Constitution in its formal self-understanding. But this, in turn, places it, at least lexically, in the age old terrain of constitutionalism which has been around in its modern guise at least since the American and French Revolutions.

Altneuland captures another sense of the current constitutional moment. For some, to judge from the hype, we are at the dawn of a monumental change, historic in its implications. For others, if we were to strike the odd word "Constitution" from the text of the Pending Draft, what we would find is just the latest, quite (but not very) important Treaty revision, in a series of revisions which has characterized the European Union for some time. Indeed, it could be argued, that there is nothing in the content of this Draft to justify the appellation "Constitution," all the more so, after the cannibalism of the June IGC. Not, then, a New Land but Old Hat.

There is no Old Hat in the series of Papers which we present here, the results of a collaboration of NYU Law and Princeton. These are not 'Reports' on the various developments to be found in the Draft which will now go before the European peoples. Practicing lawyers will not reach out to these Working Papers when they ponder the significance of Article X or Y.

We invited the contributors to engage in a reflection au fond, critically to examine the broader and deeper meanings of the process and its resulting text. We then seduced them to New York City and Princeton and once here threw them into a Lion's Den of American and European political scientists, comparative constitutionalists and historians who all had the instruction to go for the jugular. The results, I believe, vindicate the ordeal.

The papers are arranged in three sections. In Part One, we included papers that looked at the project as a whole in a comparative, historical and/or political context. Part Two includes the papers that examined some broad, horizontal constitutional items within the text itself. Part Three is given to papers which look at the architectural, institutional and constitutional landmarks within the text. All repay careful study.

JHHW

Editors:

Professor J.H.H. Weiler
- European Union Jean Monnet Chair,
Director of the Global Law School, NYU School of Law

Provost Christopher L. Eisgruber
- Director, Program in Law and Public Affairs and Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University

Contributions:

Part I:

• Neil Walker
  - Europe's Constitutional Momentum and the Search for Polity Legitimacy
  • Philip Pettit
    - Europe's Constitutional Momentum and the Search for Polity Legitimation
• Andras Sajo
  - Constitutional Enthusiasm Towards Network Constitutionalism? (Constitution - without the constitutional moment: A look from the new member states)
  • Mark Tushnet
    - Potentially Misleading Metaphors in Comparative Constitutionalism: Moments and Enthusiasm
• Ran Hirschl
  - Hegemonic Preservation in Action? Assessing the Political Origins of the EU Constitution
• Antje Wiener
  - Evolving Norms of Constitutionalism in Europe: From 'Treaty Language' to 'Constitution'
  
  

Part II:

• Armin von Bogdandy
  - The European Constitution and European Identity: Potentials and Dangers of the IGC's Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (current version)
  - The European Constitution and European Identity: A Critical Analysis of the Convention's Draft Preamble (original version)
  • Michel Rosenfeld
    - The European Treaty-Constitution and Constitutional Identity: A Comment on Professor von Bogdandy
• Miguel Poiares Maduro
  - How Constitutional Can the European Union Be? The Tension Between Intergovernamentalism and Constitutionalism in the European Union
• Gianluigi Palombella
  - Whose Europe? After the Constitution: A Goal-Based, Reflexive Citizenship
• Otto Pfersmann
  - The New Revision of the Old Constitution
• Luis Diez-Picazo
  - Treaty or Constitution? The Status of the Constitution for Europe
  
  

Part III:

• Paul Craig
  - European Governance: Executive and Administrative Powers Under the New Constitutional Settlement
  • George Bermann
    - Executive Power in the New European Constitution
• Damian Chalmers
  - The Dynamics of Judicial Authority and the Constitutional Treaty
• Mattias Kumm/Victor Ferreres Comella
  - The Future of Constitutional Conflict in the European Union: Constitutional Supremacy after the Constitutional Treaty
• Franz Mayer
  - Competences-Reloaded? The Vertical Division of Powers in the EU after the New European Constitution
• Wolfgang Wessels
  - A 'Saut constitutionnel' out of an intergovernmental trap? The provisions of the Constitutional Treaty for the Common Foreign, Security and Defence Policy
• Daniel Halberstam
  - The Bride of Messina or European Democracy and the Limits of Liberal Intergovernmentalism