Principles of European Constitutional Law

While politics wrestles with the Constitutional Treaty, this volume presents a European constitutional law, not as a mere project but as binding law. There are good reasons to treat the European Union's current primary law as constitutional law. It establishes public power, legitimates legal acts, provides a citizenship, protects fundamental rights, and regulates the relationships among legal orders as well as between law and politics. Reconstructing primary law as constitutional law yields useful insights, as this volume demonstrates. The contributions present theoretical and doctrinal fundamentals from the perspective of German-speaking scholarship, reflect the state of research, clarify methodological approaches, illuminate legal doctrines and assumptions, and identify research desiderata. The perspectives encompass varying methodologies and differing political approaches to integration. This book will be invaluable to all teachers of European Union Law.