Using a methodology that both analyzes particular constitutional texts and theories and reconstructs their historical evolution, Chris Thornhill examines the social role and legitimating status of constitutions from the first quasi-constitutional documents of medieval Europe, through the classical period of revolutionary constitutionalism, to recent processes of constitutional transition. A Sociology of Constitutions explores the reasons why modern societies require constitutions and constitutional norms and presents a distinctive socio-normative analysis of the constitutional preconditions of political legitimacy.

This book develops a unique sociological approach to the analysis of transnational legal norms. This title is also available as Open Access.

This collection brings together some of the most influential sociologists of law to confront the challenges of current transnational constitutionalism. It shows the constitution appearing in a new light: no longer as an essential factor of unity and stabilisation but as a potential defence of pluralism and innovation. The first part of the book is devoted to the analysis of the concept of constitution, highlighting the elements that can contribute from a socio-legal perspective, to clarifying the principle meanings attributed to the constitution. The study goes on to analyse some concrete aspects of the functioning of constitutions in contemporary society. In applying Luhmann’s General Systems Theory to a comparative analysis of the concept of constitution, the work contributes to a better understanding of this traditional concept in both its institutionalised and functional aspects. Defining the constitution’s contents and functions both at the conceptual level and by taking empirical issues of particular comparative interest into account, this study will be of importance to scholars and students of sociology of law, sociology of politics and comparative public law.

This landmark book provides the first systematic overview of key research in the sociology of constitutions.

Anthony Giddens has been in the forefront of developments in social theory for the past decade. In The Constitution of Society he outlines the distinctive position he has evolved during that period and offers a full statement of a major new perspective in social thought, a synthesis and elaboration of ideas touched on in previous works but described here for the first time in an integrated and comprehensive form. A particular feature is Giddens's concern to connect abstract problems of theory to an interpretation of the nature of empirical method in the social sciences. In presenting his own ideas, Giddens mounts a critical attack on some of the more orthodox sociological views. The Constitution of Society is an invaluable reference book for all those concerned with the basic issues in contemporary social theory.

This book develops a sociologically informed theory of constitutionalism in the global realm, addressing both national and transnational forms of constitutional ordering. The book begins with the argument that current approaches to constitutionalism remain tied to a state-based conception of constitutions, and overlooks underlying structural transformations that trigger the emergence of constitutional forms of ordering. Poul F. Kjaer aims to address this shortcoming by offering a sociological and historically informed analysis of the evolution of constitutionalism in the face of globalisation. The analysis contextualises on-going constitutional developments through the use of a long-term historical perspective, which is capable of highlighting the impact of deeper structural transformations unfolding within society. The book looks at the ways in which national and transnational legal forms have evolved alongside one another. It demonstrates that the formation of global constitutions has not resulted in a corresponding decrease in the power of nation states, but instead, legal and political aspects of both the nation state and the transnational have been reconfigured and intensified in a mutually supportive manner. In combining insights from a range of fields, this interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to students and scholars of constitutional law, sociology, global governance studies, and legal, social and political theory.

This book offers a social theoretical analysis of imaginaries as constituent social forces of positive law and politics. Constitutional imaginaries invite constitutional and political theorists, philosophers and sociologists to rethink the concept of constitution as the normative legal limitation and control of political power. They show that political constitutions include societal forces impossible to contain by legal norms and political institutions. The constitution of society as one polity defined by the unity of topos-ethnos-nomos, that is the unity of territory, people and their laws, informed the rise of modern nations and nationalisms as much as constitutional democratic statehood and its liberal and republican regimes. However, the imaginary of polity as one nation living on a given territory under the constitutional rule of law is challenged by the process of European integration and its imaginaries informed by transnational legal and societal pluralism, administrative governance, economic performativity and democratically mobilised polity. This book discusses the sociology of imagined communities and the philosophy of modern social imaginaries in the context of transnational European constitutionalism and its recent theories, most notably the theory of societal constitutions. It offers a new approach to the legal constitutions as societal power formations evolving at national, European and global levels. The book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in constitutional and European law theory and philosophy as much as interdisciplinary and socio-legal studies of transnational law and society.