Comparison, Translation and the Making of a Common European Constitutional Culture

Abstract

European integration has forced constitutional law scholars to abandon the perspective of methodological nationalism. Prior to the emergence of the interpretative problems raised by the intersection of domestic and European law, the dominant legal paradigm conceived of “constitution” and “state” as two inseparable terms. With the intensification of European integration and economic globalization, many different constitutionalist interpretations have emerged which all share a belief in the State's loss of centrality, such as post-, supra- and transnational constitutionalism, constitutionalism without the state and multilevel constitutionalism.