Concepts

Abstract

Abstract One of Hegel’s key insights is that understanding requires abstraction, that is, concepts. Concepts establish meaning and create knowledge. Chapter 2 traces the transformation of European public law by examining the transformation of its basic concepts. It delves into the transformation of European public law, beginning with the Jus Publicum Europaeum of the late seventeenth century and the droit public de l’Europe of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before examining Carl Schmitt’s Jus Publicum Europaeum of 1950, cast as the very opposite of what the book then develops as the new European public law. The chapter then liberates public law from its statist embrace and grounds it in one of modernity’s fundamental differentiations, the dualism of public versus private. The concept of public law comes in one of two guises: administrative or constitutional law. The conceptual moves that allow for a European administrative and constitutional law thus shed further light on the transformation of European public law. The concept of European administrative law never sparked much controversy, but it facilitates discussion of the challenge of an overbearing bureaucracy. The concept of European constitutional law proved much more controversial and provides a means to understanding many of the current challenges. The chapter finally introduces the concept of transformative constitutionalism, an innovation of the Global South, to frame European public law’s answer to its most significant challenge: the authoritarian tendencies of some national governments. Moreover, other key concepts of public law are reframed, such as authority, citizenship, sovereignty, statehood, and union.