The Cosmopolitan Constitution

Instead of presentations, each speaker will introduce a topic for discussion by the panel of five speakers and Prof. Somek. We will end the day with a roundtable discussion.

Each session will be moderated and the audience may ask questions.

CONFERENCE ORGANISED BY PROFESSOR DENNIS PATTERSON
EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE

4 JUNE 2016
SALA EUROPA
Conference venue: EUI, Villa Schifanoia (Sala Europa) - Via Boccaccio 121, I-50122 Firenze

Conference secretariat Olga Lupu; tel.+39-055-4685 306

Conference Organization:
Each session will be one hour. 3 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon. Final session (number 6) will be a wrap up. Sascha can reply, we can pick up themes from the other sessions. As I mentioned in previous emails, each one of the 5 panelists is to start one session with a 10-12 minute statement of a topic for discussion.

Session One:
Mattias Kumm: I want to focus on what I take to be Sascha´s conceptual and normative misconstruction of constitutionalism 3.0 and the challenges it claims to
be responsive to. Taking up the discussion of Sascha´s "darling dogma" of
bourgeois cosmopolitan constitutionalists as well as his account of
bourgeois and postnational citizenship I will describe how what is missing
in his account distorts the perspective on the salient features of
constitutionalism 3.0, blocks the path towards critically recovering
constitutionalisms emancipatory ambitions and ends in a posture of
sentimental nostalgia.

Session Two:
Martin Loughlin: I too want to consider some of the pathologies of Constitutionalism 3.0. But whereas Neil draws on its administrative face (rise of experts) I want to focus on the political face of 3.0. With respect to the assumptions of Constitutionalism 3.0, Somek writes: ‘we are cosmopolitans inasmuch as we are at home in the world. If we conceive of ourselves as beings inhabiting the world while also recognizing that the world is composed of a plurality of political communities, our social existence is no longer mediated by our membership in our own polity. Being at home in the world, and not in one’s political community, means to inhabit the world as a foreigner’. (26) The controversial French writer Michel Houllebecq, put it more bluntly. On winning the Prix Goncourt in 2010, he stated: ‘I am not a citizen and I have no desire to become one. We have no duties to our country. No such thing exists. We are individuals, not citizens or subjects. France is a hotel, nothing more.’

Session Three:
Jelena von Achenbach: A core issue of the normativity of the constitution is the relation between the constitutional organization of the political powers and actual political practice. I will take up the reflections in the book on checks and balances as first envisioned by constitutionalism 1.0, which are condensed in the observation that “the constitution as law not only establishes powers but also allows these powers to be determined by the social forces underlying their actual exercise”. How the dynamics of the political process that is the subject of the constitution “dynamize” the meaning of the constitution itself is what I am interested in. To address this question I will discuss the notion of self-organization of the political process. I will illustrate my perspective by reference to the EU’s legislative process and, making use of sociological insights, argue that the self-organization of the political process de-stabilizes the structural-organizational side of the constitution.

Session Four:
Marco Goldoni: 'Who are the subjects of the Cosmopolitan Constitution? Somek's reconstruction of the development of modern constitutionalism in three stages is Hegelian all the way down. Yet, for all its emphasis on the concrete forms of social freedom and relations, and the mediating role of State sovereignty, not much is devoted to the subjects of each constitutional epoch. But what is mediated exactly by the European States if we do not know its concrete subjects and forces?

Session Five:
Neil Walker: Having just heard Sascha give the 'next' and very stimulating chapter of the book at a conference at Kings College, I would like to focus on some of the pathologies of - and possible escape routes from his Constitutionalism Mark III. There are many interesting and sometimes contentious arguments here ( e.g the 'alegal' nature of legal pluralism, the pervasiveness of the influence of global financial capitalism) but I would esp. like to concentrate on Sascha's thinking about the role of expertise in contemporary constitutionalism.
His critique of the new transnational  administrative constitutionalism suggests a kind of  transnational epistocracy of false necessity. Working from  a set of emergency imperatives unduly influenced by market considerations, the distant experts leech what remans of our democratic self-determination (I caricature for the sake of brevity!).
But, while Plato may have overstated the case, we have always known that government of any kind, perhaps especially constitutional government, needs expertise. The key question is always its relationship to democratic voice. I would like to discuss possible models of thinking about that in the transnational context which might question Sascha's tendency to view  the new technocracy  as necessarily corrosive of democracy and/or symptomatic of democracy's demise.