Constituent Power

Explores the history of the idea of constituent power over five key events, from the French Revolution to the present.

With a strong focus on constitutional law, this book examines the legal as well as the political power of 'the people' in constitutional democracies. Bringing together an international range of contributors from the USA, Latin America, the UK and continental Europe, it explores the complex relationship between constitutional democracy and 'the people' from the angles of constitutional law, legal theory, political theory, and history. Contributors explore this relationship through the lens of radical democracy, engaging with the work of key figures such as Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Claude Lefort, and Jacques Ranciere.

This book examines the relationship between constituent power and the law, and the place of the former in constitutional history, drawing from constitutional theory beyond the Anglo-American sphere, with new material made available for the first time to English readers.

This book explores the democratic methods by which political communities make their basic law, and the dangers associated with constitution-making.

The concept of constituent power plays a major part in modern political and legal theory— in how we think about the political. This book tackles the twofold issue of public authority and public autonomy in the modern conception of the political by analysing the notion of constituent power, its function in the modern political apparatus, and debates about its meaning and function in our own context. Focusing on contemporary debates on constitutionalism "beyond" the state, Geneviève Nootens assesses the prospects for recasting the notion of constituent power in a polycentric setting that challenges state sovereignty as embodying the autonomy of the political. She argues that constituent power belongs with the conceptual apparatus of a theory of government peculiar to a statist way of knowing, and being into, the world, and that it is too much dependent upon the statist framework for it to have critical purchase on the new mappings of public authority. Nootens stresses the critical need to frame public authority appropriately if we are to conceptualize a conception of collective political agency that can sustain public autonomy in the current era. Constituent Power Beyond the State will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, democratic theory, law, and constitutionalism.

This book seeks to develop a new approach to EU legitimacy by reformulating the classical notion of constituent power for the context of European integration and challenging the conventional theoretical assumptions regarding the EU's ultimate source of authority.

Engaging the current political and jurisprudential thought on constituent power with a radical political re-thinking of human rights, Ilan Rua Wall develops the idea that human rights must be considered as a non-metaphysical process of 'right-ing'.

In this book, Catherine Frost uses evidence and case studies to offer a re-examination of declarations of independence and the language that comprises such documents. Considered as a quintessential form of founding speech in the modern era, declarations of independence are however poorly understood as a form of expression, and no one can completely account for how they work. Beginning with the founding speech in the American Declaration, Frost uses insights drawn from unexpected or unlikely forms of founding in cases like Ireland and Canada to reconsider the role of time and loss in how such speech is framed. She brings the discussion up to date by looking at recent debates in Scotland, where an undeclared declaration of independence overshadows contemporary politics. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and using a contextualist, comparative theory method, Frost demonstrates that the capacity for renewal through speech arises in aspects of language that operate beyond conventional performativity. Language, Democracy, and the Paradox of Constituent Power is an excellent resource for researchers and students of political theory, democratic theory, law, constitutionalism, and political history.