Prague Constitutional Seminar Series: Maarten Stremler (5. 3.)

Katedra ústavního práva zve na seminář Prague Constitutional Seminar Series a IMPURE s Dr Maartenem Stremlerem (Maastrich University), který se uskuteční ve čtvrtek dne 5. března od 16:30 v místnosti č. 38. Dr Stremler vystoupí s příspěvkem na téma What Is Constitutional Scholarship About – and What Should It Be About? – bude hovořit o první kapitole své připravované knihy.

Akce se uskuteční v anglickém jazyce. 

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Bio

Maarten Stremler is assistant professor of constitutional law. His research and teaching focus on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights in the Netherlands and the European Union. He is a member of the editorial board of the European Yearbook of Constitutional Law, member of the board of The Netherlands Association for Philosophy of Law and fellow at the Montesquieu Institute. Among other things, he is currently working on a research project on the foundations of constitutional scholarship. This project is funded by the Statesman Thorbecke Fund of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). For his publications, see here.

Abstract

While it may seem self-evident what constitutional scholarship is about, what counts as ‘the constitution’, what falls within ‘constitutional law’, and how the discipline understands its own task vary across national traditions. There is considerable overlap, but also subtle and at times fundamental differences in scope, method and normative ambition. In this talk, I seek to thematise these differences from a European comparative perspective. I begin with a brief introduction to the book project European Varieties of National Constitutional Scholarship, which maps how constitutional law is conceptualised, studied and debated in different national contexts. I then consider three structural challenges confronting constitutional scholarship: the shift of public authority to supranational levels; changing modes of state action beyond classical legislation; and the rise of powerful private actors whose decisions may have public effects. Different national traditions respond to these developments in different ways. I briefly illustrate this by examining how Dutch constitutional scholarship engages with these challenges. The talk concludes with a reflection on the normative question of what constitutional scholarship ought to be about. If constitutionally relevant power is no longer confined to the national state, constitutional scholarship cannot simply remain state-centred. The question, then, is whether the discipline is prepared to rethink its object – and whether such rethinking should take place primarily within national contexts or instead as part of a genuinely European conversation about the future of the field.