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New wine, old wineskins: on the geographical assumptions of international constitutional law

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Abstract

One of the central claims in the international constitutionalism literature posits that, through the process of constitutionalisation, the nation-state can be overcome. Drawing on John Agnew, this paper shows that the international constitutionalism literature is caught in a ‘territorial trap’. It argues that our conception of constitutionalism is profoundly shaped by the territorial logic of the state, and that, as a result, the linkage between constitutionalism and the state is deeper and more complex than has been previously acknowledged. By leaving the underlying territorial assumptions of constitutional law unproblematised, international constitutionalism, as it stands today, reinforces and re-enacts the state rather than overcoming it.

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Notes

  1. The reasons, however, are different. One quick possibility is functional considerations. The collective nature of many issues like global warming, international terrorism, free trade, or peace and security means that states alone cannot act but that it is necessary to act collectively. This is heightened with globalisation and the accompanying technological changes.

  2. Powell does acknowledge the case of Syria. However, she simply mentions the case in a footnote and argues without much justification that the Syrian case merely represents a ‘lingering resistance to this shift’ (Powell 2012: 298, n. 3).

  3. Brenner (2004: 38) introduces also a third dimension, dubbed methodological nationalism, referring to the treatment of the national scale as the basic ontological level of social relations.

  4. The end of this section provides a number of instances in the literature, exemplifying each of those points.

  5. Jus cogens norms are peremptory norms that cannot be derogated and that all states are obliged to observe. Erga omnes norms are those whereby the violation of a norm can be denounced not only by the state that suffered the violation, but also by any other state. The key difference between them is that the latter norms can be modified or altered, whereas the former cannot.

  6. The principle, whereby, newly formed states need to have is that those borders that they had before become independent.

  7. Take, for example, the recent reform of the health system in Spain with the Royal Decree-Law 16/2012, whereby illegal immigrants cannot have access to the national health system except for urgent cases.

  8. Open method of coordination refers to an intergovernmental procedure whereby, instead of a binding law, the EU, in order to further certain objectives within its member states, relies on soft-law mechanisms like guidelines or best practices. Comitology refers to a process, whereby the EU law is modified or adjusted within diverse committees.

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Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the COST Action IS1003 workshop ‘Organising Fragmented Territoriality’, Zentrum fur Globalieserung und Governance, Hamburg, 15–17 November, 2012; and at the ‘International Law and the Construction of Knowledge’ meeting, Lund University, Lund, 29–31 January, 2013. The author would like to thank the participants of these workshops for their helpful comments. In addition, the author is particularly indebted to Sarah Auster, Katja Freistein, Philip Liste, the editors and the anonymous reviewers. Their comments were invaluable in vastly improving the paper. The usual caveats apply.

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  1. Angelo Sraffa Department of Legal Studies, Bocconi University, Via Roentgen 1, 1st Floor, 20136, Milan, Italy

    Alexis Galán

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Galán, A. New wine, old wineskins: on the geographical assumptions of international constitutional law. J Int Relat Dev 19, 222–241 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2016.1

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