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The Common European Constitutional Culture

Its Sources, Limits and Identity

by Roman Hauser (Volume editor) Marek Zirk-Sadowski (Volume editor) Bartosz Wojciechowski (Volume editor)
©2016 Edited Collection 210 Pages
Series: Dia-Logos, Volume 21

Summary

The authors focus on the interrelations between the sense of individual identity and the sense of national identity. Their aim is to find a common European legal culture. The processes of Europeanization have been proceeding on the legal level, wherein the CJEU took a prominent role, and on the level of intergovernmental decision-making. In the aftermath, the EU may be comprehended in terms of the rights-based union and problem-solving entity although the emergence of the values-based community has been stymied and the transnational public spheres are rather thin. This caused a democratic deficit and provoked debates about the EU as a post-democratic polity. There are disputes whether this oddity of the EU indicates its nobility or perversion. But the fact remains that the Eurocitizens in their post-sovereign states became lost in the Hegelian extreme terms of the universal-formal rights. Their individual interests made them especially exposed to the shocks of the economic crisis. This makes it necessary to address the issue of the common European constitutional culture.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Table of Contents
  • Introduction
  • Part I The Common European Identity and the Idea of Self-Constitutionalisation
  • European Legal and Constitutional Cultures
  • The Holy Grail as the Heritage of the Future – on the Search for a Common Legal Culture in Presources of the EU Law
  • From the Community of Law to the Community of Principles
  • The Political Contingence of Constitutional Voluntas and the Practical Continuity of Law’s Cultural “Project”. A Conversation Piece Concerning a “Narrative” of Discontinuity
  • Mediation and the European Legal Culture
  • Part II The Human Rights Culture and the Power of Judgment
  • On Human Rights Protection in the European Union Legal Order: Between Pragmatism and the Axiology of Integration
  • How Moral Judgment Competence Fosters Discretionary Powers: A Dilemmatic Approach
  • The Job of the Judge in the Context of Silenced People: The Opuz Case
  • The Emergence of the Identity of the Administrative Law in the Process of Building the Relation of the Administrative Courts vis-à-vis the Case Law of the Constitutional Tribunal
  • The Place of the Case-law of the Administrative Courts in the System of the Constitutional Control of the Activities of Public Administration
  • European Constitutional Culture and Civil Procedure

← 6 | 7 →

Introduction

The fundamental postulate from Lisbon Treaty 2007 and other basic EU’s acts is to make “an ever closer Union among the peoples of Europe” (Art 1) and empower its citizens to participate in processes of will-formation because the rule of law and the principle of democracy have the same source of their legitimacy, notably, public spheres. Thus unleashing normative premises of institutionalization of discourse occurs Janus-faced as it runs towards the human rights interpretation and recognition, that means, it results in the interplay between universalizable normative claims and their interpretation coloured with the ethical fibre – be it national, ethnic or cultural.

Nevertheless, processes of Europeanization have been proceeding on the legal level basically, wherein the prominent role was casted by the CJEU, and also on the level of intergovernmental decision-making. In the aftermath of such a proceeding the EU may be comprehended in terms of the rights-based union and problem-solving entity though the emergence of the values-based community has been stymied and the transnational public spheres are rather thin. In other words, the ethical fibre became crumpled up or at least huddled for the effective governance performance what caused a democratic deficit and gave rise to debates on the EU as a post-democratic polity. There are disputes whether this oddity of the EU indicates its nobility or perversion, but the fact remains, that the Eurocitizens, in their post-sovereign states, became lost in the Hegelian extreme terms of the universal-formal rights (including the ECJ rulings in the Viking and Laval cases) and the individual interests what made them especially exposed on the economic crisis shocks.

The most important task carried out under the book is to undertake theoretical and jurisprudential research on the interrelations between the sense of the individual identity and the sense of national identity (including constitutional one) and the search for a common European legal culture. The outcome of the study in question will be a proposal of the foundation for a new paradigm of the EU law taking into account all of the said manifestations of identity. One of the main generators of the contemporary changes in the processes of globalization and legal integration is the specificity of constructing the law, namely its argumentative creation and application to specific situations, taking into account both the tradition and current claims to validity of one’s national legislation and its national recipients, and then confronting it with the diversity of legal systems developed by other states, supranational or international institutions. This ← 7 | 8 → process may lead to some vital questions about the community and the nature of the political community whose rightful member one could become. The current paradigm of law, which has provided for civil rights in the Western tradition already since the times of Kant, has resulted in the vision of Europeanization only through legal and institutional integration. This, in turn, led to the collapse of civic integration, as manifested in the phenomenon of “democratic deficit” or a “crisis of public legitimacy” in the European Union. This generated the need for a new paradigm which will expressly take into account the widely discussed postulate (mostly in public institutional structures) of the empowerment of citizens and the requirement to provide national identity, while seeking and promoting a common legal culture. The proposed change of the paradigm of law recognizes the EU law through the prism of the references to the vision of the Roman republic, where the key role was played by the citizen. The condition for creating such a common legal culture is thus the development of the processes of formulating public justification for normative claims which is to be uniformly binding for us. The processes of formulating public justification will also possibly criticise the moral and ethical beliefs of all the creators and, at the same time, recipients of the EU law (i.e., those that come from all the EU Member States), as to arrive at such law and such an interpretation of the sources of common law which can be regarded as a common and thus unifying rather than separating cooperative goal of the EU citizens. The concept of the European citizenship will gain an actual content if the said European identity, and thus also the sources of the legal legitimation of the EU legal system, become actually “communitised”, that is discursively determined in the processes of cooperative interpretation of the public politico-legal culture. This will perhaps allow, on the one hand, to overcome the contemporary crisis of the identity of the individual (understood as a rightful citizen having an actual influence on his or her rights and duties) while, on the other hand, to resolve and settle the emerging (or better yet – existing) conflict between the national identity and the European identity.

Details

Pages
210
Year
2016
ISBN (PDF)
9783653054767
ISBN (ePUB)
9783653972405
ISBN (MOBI)
9783653972399
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631659915
DOI
10.3726/978-3-653-05476-7
Language
English
Publication date
2016 (February)
Keywords
Philosophy of Law Identity Human Rights European Law
Published
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2016. 210 pp.

Biographical notes

Roman Hauser (Volume editor) Marek Zirk-Sadowski (Volume editor) Bartosz Wojciechowski (Volume editor)

Roman Hauser is a Professor of Administrative Procedure at Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland) and the President of the Polish Supreme Administrative Court. Marek Zirk-Sadowski is a Professor of Theory and Philosophy of Law at the University of Łódź (Poland) and the Vice-president of the Polish Supreme Administrative Court. Bartosz Wojciechowski is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Łódź (Poland) and a judge at the Supreme Administrative Court.

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210 pages