European Constitutionalism as the Metatheory of the Construction of Legal and Political Reality and the Challenges for its Development*

• Authors: Jolanta Bieliauskaitė , Vytautas Šlapkauskas
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The latter European crisis reveals the fact that traditional agreements between governments of the Member States and supranational political and legal institutions of the European Union are not sufficient for the maintenance of European Union stability and integrity. Therefore, the political and legal sustainability of the European Union requires a certain metatheory as a methodology, which could essentially contribute to the coherent construction, interpretation and assessment of theoretical and practical issues of the European Union’s legal and political reality. This paper aims to explore two main questions: What is constitutionalism as a legal-political metatheory? What challenges are faced by this theory while addressing the specific EU legal-political reality construction problems? The results of the research reveal that constitutionalism as a metatheory is constituted by principles and values, which provide ideological support for the development of the nation, and performs a methodological function in the construction of legal and political reality. However, the EU’s political elite still seeks to legitimize constitutionalism as a political action theory, which, accordingly, legitimizes the respective legal policies it pursues. This process dangerously increases the gap between the EU’s political elite and the societies of its Member States.

Keywords

EN

The European Union; Constitutionalism; Liberal Democracy; European Integration; Legal Metatheory

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: DANUBE: Law and Economics Review
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 41-52

Dates

published

2016-03-01

online

2016-04-09

Contributors

author

Jolanta Bieliauskaitė

• Institute of Public Law, Faculty of Law, Mykolas Romeris University, Ateities g. 20, Vilnius 08303, Lithuania.

author

Vytautas Šlapkauskas

• Department of Law, Faculty of Public Security, Mykolas Romeris University, Ateities g. 20, Vilnius 08303, Lithuania.

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/danb-2016-0003