Legal and Constitutional Theory of the European Union

Abstract

The chapter’s overview of the constitutional theory and general legal theory of the EU reflects two different manifestations of the still limited cultivation of theory within EU law. The discussion of the relatively crowded field of EU constitutional theory, both explanatory and normative, reveals the abiding importance of the relationship of different positions (affirmative and critical) to the received state tradition of constitutional practice and theory as a distinguishing mark and point of opposition. The discussion of the wider contribution of legal theory to the study of EU legal doctrine more generally is more developmental. While acknowledging work that is explicit and systematic in its theorization, it is mainly concerned with how this more sparsely populated intellectual landscape might be filled by teasing out the fuller theoretical significance of the quite different background suppositions—positivist, idealist, culturalist, and pragmatic—of how law works that ground EU legal studies.