Emilios Christodoulidis

Bio: Emilios Christodoulidis is an academic researcher from University of Glasgow. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & Philosophy of law. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 80 publications receiving 770 citations. Previous affiliations of Emilios Christodoulidis include University of Edinburgh.

Constitutional Irresolution: Law and the Framing of Civil Society

Abstract: Against the constitutional optimism that pervades our political rationality, I will argue the case for a disorganised civil society, genuinely plural, resistant to dominant representations that call it into line and thus undercut its radical potential. I will explore some of the more adventurous and persuasive such attempts to argue for an inclusive constitutionalism, one that supposedly reaches out to civil society and in order to do so relaxes the rigidity of its own terms, to harbour and host the diversity it aspires to represent. I will argue that these attempts at inclusion create constitutional irresolutions either forcing impossible demands on constitutionalism or dispelling the disorganisation it is meant to give expression to. I will then argue that in spite of the inability to capture them as constitutional moments, politics of ‘pure presence’ and real self‐determination are possible, and against constitutional mystifications, resistance might find its opportunity in praxis, understood in the language of praxis philosophy (more specifically the work of Antonio Negri).

Jurisprudence: Themes and Concepts

Abstract: Part 1: Law and Politics. 1. General Themes: 1.1 Introduction to the Relationship between Law and Politics 1.2 Sovereignty 1.3 The rule of law & the `inner morality of law' 1.4 Rights 1.5 Identifying Valid Law. 2. Advanced Topics: 2.1 Justice 2.2 Constitutionalism and Citizenship 2.3 Law, politics and globalisation 2.4 Law and the state of emergency 2.5 The Rule of law in political transitions. Tutorials. Part 2: Legal Reasoning. 1. General Themes: 1.1 Legal System and legal reasoning 1.2 Legal Formalism 1.3 American Legal Realism 1.4 Open texture' and the limits of judicial discretion 1.5 Law as Interpretative practice 1.6 The politics of legal reasoning. 2. Advanced Topics. 2.1 Natural law and the limits of rule following 2.2 Equality, difference and domination: feminist critiques of adjudication 2.3 Trials, facts and narratives 2.4 Judging in an unjust society 2.5 Law and Deconstruction. Tutorials. Part 3: Law and Modernity. 1. General Themes. 1.1 The Advent of Modernity 1.2 Law and Social Solidarity 1.3 Law, power and exploitation 1.4 Formal legal rationality and legal modernity 1.5 Transformations of Modern law. 2. Advanced Topics. 2.1 Legal pluralism 2.2 Juridification 2.3 Displacing the juridical: Foucault on power and discipline 2.4.Law in the risk society 2.5 Law and Autopoiesis

On the Politics of Societal Constitutionalism

Abstract: This paper is an internal critique of the theory of societal constitutionalism as developed by Gunther Teubner, with a specific emphasis on the constitutional and the political dimensions of the theory. As critique it focuses on the arguably unacknowledged dangers of co-option: the danger that constitutionalization, as an ongoing process, undercuts what we typically associate with the constitutional, which is its framing function; that this problem is accentuated when it comes to the transnational; and that its reflexivity runs the danger of market capture, in which case it remains only nominally political. The danger of market capture for societal constitutionalism is that the market becomes the means of calling forth the “societal” by submitting it to functional imperatives and, in the final instance, harnessing it to market allocations. This paper is, however, also an internal critique, because it, too, relies on the key concept of reflexive self-definition, aspiring to think it on an uncompromisingly political register.

Social rights constitutionalism: an antagonistic endorsement

Abstract: The article discusses how we might understand solidarity as the organizing concept behind the institutionalization of social rights. I argue that writing solidarity into social rights constitutionalism carries productive tension into constitutional thinking because it disturbs the smooth passage from civil to political and finally to social rights. Marshall's influential argument that social rights are continuous to civil and political rights has become both the grounding assumption in constitutional theory and at the same time the most obvious lie in the constitutional practice of advanced capitalist democracies, clearly belied in EU constitutional practice under austerity. I explore the various attempts to accommodate the continuity of civil, political, and social rights in the face of the contradictory articulation of social democracy and capitalism before undertaking something of a defence of the antinomic significance of social rights constitutionalism, and probing what mileage might be left in ‘exploiting’ the contradiction between capitalist interests and social rights.

The open method as a new mode of governance: the case of soft economic policy co-ordination

Abstract: Taking economic co-ordination in EMU as a starting point, this article explores the development of the open method of co-ordination, addressing whether it is a new form of governance from two related perspectives. First, to what extent can the method be effectively applied outside the scope of economic policy? Second, will it lead to policy transfer to the EU and hence act only as a transitional mode of governance? Identified at the Lisbon European Council, the method codified practices such as benchmarking, target-setting and peer review developed in the Luxembourg, Cardiff and Cologne processes. The method offers a new approach to governance of the EU as a heterarchical, decentred and dynamic process. It supports and radicalizes the principle of subsidiarity; offers an alternative to the treaty rules on enhanced co-operation; and addresses some of the legitimacy issues inherent in the EU. In EMU, the method arose out of a specific policy framework with a common monetary policy complemented by the coordination of national economic policies. The recent recommendation issued against Ireland is the first example of the operation of the method in EMU and shows how debate can be stimulated and how different and arguably equally valid perspectives defended. The particular experience of EMU with a sound money, sound finance paradigm, a long history of project-building by key elites and the central role of the European Council suggest similar conditions are required for the effective application of the method in other policy spheres. The context within which the method has operated to date is contingent and could change either over time or between policy fields. If so, the very openness of the method may serve to reconfigure the boundaries of competence between the Member States and the Union, after all.

Restorative justice The real story

Abstract: Advocates’ claims about restorative justice contain four myths: (1) restorative justice is the opposite of retributive justice; (2) restorative justice uses indigenous justice practices and was the...