The Undecided Power
Description
The book traces the political struggles of politicians and civil servants, judges and academics to establish a European Union from the Hague Congress of Europe in 1948 to the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. Frank Schorkopf reconstructs the project of a European political order as a coexistence and collaboration between three lines of thinking - constitutionalism, governmentalism, and pragmatism - in which constitutional authority is undecided. The sixteen chapters make it clear that although the actors wanted to create something new, they were hardly able to break away from their constitutional-history perspectives and were constantly confronted with classic questions about the architecture of power: questions of legitimacy and acceptance, of fundamental rights protection and identity.
Reviews / Votes
"The book offers a fresh perspective on the history of law in modern Europe, providing valuable insights and new approaches to contextualization and is well worth reading." - Anna Hoberg , Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory
"Frank Schorkopf presents an intellectually dense, theoretically sound, and at the same time narratively compelling account of European constitutional history. 'The Undecided Power' is a work of great significance ... a plea for an integrative political historiography of Europe." - PD Dr. Ines Soldwisch , Chair of Modern History and its Cultures of Knowledge and Technology, RWTH Aachen University
"One cannot finish reading this book without being filled with gratitude for all those who fought for Europe through these difficult processes. And for Frank Schorkopf, who reconstructs these processes so concisely." - Prof. Reinhard Zimmermann , retired Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law