The Project of Constitutional Sociology: Irritating Nation State Constitutionalism

Abstract

Trends of constitutionalisation can be identified beyond the nation state. They follow two different directions. Outside the limits of the nation state, constitutions emerge in the institutions of international politics, and they emerge simultaneously outside the limits of politics in the ‘private’ sectors of global society. Transnationalisation confronts constitutional sociology with three different challenges: (1) to analyse empirically ongoing constitutionalisation processes beyond the nation state, (2) to develop a theory of transnational societal constitutionalism, and (3) to formulate sociological preconditions for normative perspectives in politics and law.

Keywords: transnational constitutionalism, societal constitutionalism, transnational regimes, transnational human rights, horizontal effect of human rights

JEL Classification: K10