This innovative study examines the authority constituting the European Union. It claims that the type of power constituting a transnational regime transcends traditional forms of constitutional legality. It argues that the European constitutional project is out of step with the normative make-up of such a regime. It is to be feared, indeed, that the adoption of a Constitution for Europe would create a smokescreen obscuring a new and disturbing reality.

Drawing on the ancient tradition of linking different types of political power with the composition of the citizen's soul, the book...

In an age of widespread cutbacks on social spending, the prospects of social policy generally appear to be grim. If noticeable progress has been recently made in the European Union, then it is in regard to rooting out discrimination. Indeed, anti-discrimination law and policy appears to be the one sphere of social policy whose success is causally connected to the European Union.
But how successful can anti-discrimination law be? This book uses legal analysis in order to expose the intrinsic shortcomings of common approaches. Anti-discrimination law fails to provide adequate legal guidance...

Originally the constitution was expected to express and channel popular sovereignty. It was the work of freedom, springing from and facilitating collective self-determination. After the Second World War this perspective changed: the modern constitution owes its authority not only to collective authorship, it also must commit itself credibly to human rights. Thus people recede into the background, and the national constitution becomes embedded into one or other system of 'peer review' among nations.
This is what Alexander Somek argues is the creation of the cosmopolitan constitution....

"This introductory series of books provides concise studies of the philosophical foundations of law, of perennial topics in the philosophy of law, and of important and opposing schools of thought. The series is aimed principally at students in philosophy, law, and political science"--

This book offers a conceptual reconstruction of the legal relation on the basis of a critique of legal positivism.

Über das Recht wüßten wir nur wenig, wenn uns nicht Experten darüber Auskunft gäben. Sonst bliebe es weitestgehend unerfindlich. Rechtliches Wissen ist eine Dienstleistung, die von juristischen Experten für den Staat oder für private Auftraggeber erbracht wird. Aber was garantiert, daß die juristische Expertise auch wirklich vom Recht handelt und nicht davon, was Auftraggeber oder Machthaber als Recht ausgeben möchten? Aus rechtspositivistischer Sicht liegt diese Garantie letztlich in der methodisch durchgeführten Bindung ans Gesetz. Die jüngere Naturrechtslehre hat sie um die...