Sociological Constitutionalism

This landmark book provides the first systematic overview of key research in the sociology of constitutions.

Paul Blokker (Edited by), Chris Thornhill (Edited by)

9781107561144, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 December 2018

367 pages
23 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

This landmark book provides the first systematic overview of the key scholarly contributions in an emerging field of research on constitutionalism: the sociology of constitutions. It presents chapters offering very different normative and methodological approaches to constitutions, ranging from analysis of national constitutional law, to research on transnational legal forms, to discussions of the constitutional impact of international human rights law. The book makes an important contribution to a series of wider debates - spanning constitutional law, legal theory, comparative constitutionalism, sociology, and political science - about the changing nature of constitutionalism. Researchers and students in constitutional law will gain a comprehensive appreciation of a diverse range of distinctively sociological approaches to constitutional law and an in-depth understanding of distinctive sociological dimensions of constitutions. The book offers insights into the sources of constitutional normativity in society and it proposes different sociological methods for addressing them.

Introduction
Sociological constitutionalism Paul Blokker and Chris Thornhill
Part I. National Constitutions and Sociological Method: 1. The social lives of constitutions Kim Lane Scheppele
2. Towards a sociology of constitutional transformation – understanding South Africa's post-Apartheid constitutional order Heinz Klug
3. Sociological constitutionalism – an evolutionary approach Hauke Brunkhorst
Part II. Constitutional Sociology between the National and the Transnational: 4. Constitutionalism between nation states and global law Chris Thornhill
5. Politics and the political in sociological constitutionalism Paul Blokker
6. Constitutions as symbolic orders – the cultural analysis of constitutionalism Hans Vorländer
7. The rule of the market: economic constitutionalism understood sociologically Sabine Frerichs
Part III. Constitutional Law and Transnational Society: 8. From constitutionalism to transconstitutionalism: beyond constitutional nationalism, cosmopolitan constitutional unity and fragmentary constitutional pluralism Marcelo Neves
9. Societal constitutionalism: nine variations on a theme by David Sciulli Gunther Teubner.

Subject Areas: Social law [LNT], Constitutional & administrative law [LND], International human rights law [LBBR]