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A Multitude of Constitutions?
European Constitutional Pluralism in Question
John Erik Fossum and Agustín José Menéndez (eds)
RECON Report No 20
ARENA Report 4/12, Oslo, May 2012
This report discusses the merits of the theory of constitutional synthesis as a constitutional theory for a democratic European Union. The theory has been developed by John Erik Fossum and Agustín José Menéndez in The Constitution’s Gift (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011).
The key component of the theory is the regulative ideal of a common constitutional law, of a constitution composed of a collection of national constitutions, which makes up the deep constitution of the European Union. Constitutional synthesis is comprised of normative integration and institutional consolidation which together constitute a distinct constitutional dynamic. In this report contributors from political science, sociology, law and history discuss the extent to which they find the theory promising, and the research agenda that the theory of constitutional synthesis has produced.
The report contains the proceedings of a workshop held in Oslo in January 2011 as part of the 2nd International Conference on Democracy as Idea and Practice, organised within RECON's WP 2 on constitutional politics and the Research Programme on Democracy at the University of Oslo.
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