Political constitutionalism as counterweighting gestures: on the critical constitutional theory of Emilios Christodoulidis The redress of law: globalisation, constitutionalism and market capture , by Emilios Christodoulidis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 608pp, £ 36.99, ISBN 9781108732109

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Redress of Law is an ambitious work that aims to put contemporary constitutional crises under a new theoretical lens. Instead of attributing these crises to the pluralisation of constituencies or constitutional registers in the process of globalisation, Christodoulidis argues that they are induced by ‘market capture’ which occurs not only at the level of constitutional order but also at the metalevel of constitutional reflexivity. Accordingly, this monograph, as ‘a treatise in critical constitutional theory’, contributes to exploring law’s countervailing forces. In this review essay, I explore the reason why constitutional theory should be critical, and whether critical gestures can be compatible with the normative dimension of constitutionalism. As Christodoulidis convincingly demonstrates in this book, critique can protect political constitutionalism from internally being policed by the facticity of necessity and from externally being colonised by the market mentality.KEYWORDS: Critical constitutional theorymarket capturepolitical constitutionalismreflexivitystrategies Notes1 See, eg, Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘Strategies of Rupture’ (2009) 20(1) Law and Critique 3; Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘A “Minfield of Misreckonings”: Europe’s Constitutional Pluralism’ in Catherine Bernard, Markus Gehring, and Iyiola Solanke (eds), Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies 2011–2012, Volume 14 (Hart Publishing, 2012) 119–44; Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘The European Court of Justice and “Total Market” Thinking’ (2013) 14(10) German Law Journal 2005; Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘Social Rights Constitutionalism: An Antagonistic Endorsement’ (2017) 44(1) Journal of Law and Society 123.2 See Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘Against Substitution: The Constitutional Thinking of Dissensus’ in Martin Loughlin and Neil Walker (eds), The Paradox of Constitutionalism: Constituent Power and Constitutional Form (Oxford University Press, 2007) 207.3 See, eg, Nico Krisch, Beyond Constitutionalism: The Pluralist Structure of Postnational Law (Oxford University Press, 2010).4 See, eg, Gunther Teubner, Constitutional Fragments: Societal Constitutionalism and Globalization (Oxford University Press, 2012).5 Dieter Grimm, ‘The Achievement of Constitutionalism and its Prospects in a Changed World’ in Petra Dobner and Martin Loughlin (eds), The Twilight of Constitutionalism? (Oxford University Press, 2010) 9.6 See Joseph Weiler, ‘Federalism and Constitutionalism: Europe’s Sonderweg’ in Kalypso Nicolaidis and Robert Bowse (eds), The Federal Version: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2001) 76.7 Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘Lindahl’s Phenomenology of Legality’ (2014) 16(2) Etica & Politica 940, 942.8 Christodoulidis, ‘Lindahl’s Phenomenology of Legality’ (n 7) 947.9 Ibid, 944.10 Niklas Luhmann, Law as a Social System (Oxford University Press, 2004) 368.11 Ibid, 407.12 Ibid, 192.13 See Niklas Luhmann, A Sociological Theory of Law (Trans. Elizabeth King-Utz and Martin Albrow, Routledge, 2nd edn 1983).14 Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘A “Minfield of Misreckonings”: Europe’s Constitutional Pluralism’ in Catherine Bernard, Markus Gehring, and Iyiola Solanke (eds), Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies 2011–2012, Volume 14 (Hart Publishing, 2012) 119.15 Christodoulidis, ‘A “Minfield of Misreckonings”’ (n 14) 127.16 Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (Trans. George Simpson, Free Press, 1933) 115.17 Teubner has argued that centralised social integration is effectively ruled out today, which requires ‘a displacement of integrative mechanism from the level of society to the level of subsystems’. See Gunther Teubner, ‘Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law’ (1983) 17(2) Law and Society Review 239, 273.18 Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘Strategies of Rupture’ (2009) 20(1) Law and Critique 3, 13.19 Christodoulidis, ‘A “Minfield of Misreckonings”’ (n 14) 131.20 Ibid 122.21 Luhmann (n 10) 214.22 See Gunther Teubner, ‘Self-subversive Justice: Contingency or Transcendence Formula of Law?’ (2009) 72(1) Modern Law Review 1.23 See Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (Cambridge University Press, 1908/1999).24 See Hans Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization: Legal Order and the Politics of A-legality (Oxford University Press, 2013).25 See Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us (Trans. Gregory Elliot, Verso, 1999).26 Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘Critical Theory and the Law: Reflections on Origins, Trajectories and Conjunctures’ in Emilios Christodoulidis, Ruth Dukes and Marco Goldoni (eds), Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory (Edward Elgar, 2019) 20.27 Christodoulidis, ‘Critical Theory and the Law’ (n 26) 4.28 Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘On the Politics of Societal Constitutionalism’, (2013) 20(2) Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 629, 629.Additional informationFundingThis research has been funded by ‘Major Project of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Jiangsu Higher Education [2022SJZD003] “Research on the Theory of Chinese Labour Constitution under the Goal of Common Prosperity”’.