Constitutional Life and Europe's Area of Freedom, Security and Justice [Hardcover]

The challenge of thinking about the place of constitutionalism beyond the conventional categories of the nation state has become a principal concern for legal and political scholars. This book casts this issue in a different light by exploring the implications for the constitutionalism of legal integration in the European Union's 'area of freedom, security and justice'. In doing so it makes a novel contribution to an understanding of the European Union as a political community beyond the state, but in addition explores how this entails thinking differently about what is essential concerning constitutionalism. The book argues that instead of seeking to theorise constitutional foundations we actually begin to encounter the constitutional life implied by political and legal practices in the European Union and as exemplified here by 'the area of freedom, security and justice'.Contents: Preface; Introduction; Constitutional life and the area of freedom, security and justice; Constitutional life and legitimacy; Public goods as constitutional goods; The public good of security; The construction of an area of freedom, security and justice: the practices of constitutional life examined; Constitutional life and criminal justice; Conclusion: learning constitutionalism; Bibliography; Index.Alun Howard Gibbs holds the City Solicitors' Educational Trust Lectureship in Constitutional and Administrative Law, University of Southampton