From transconstitutionalism to transdemocracy
- Autores: Marcelo Neves
- Localización: European Law Journal, ISSN-e 1468-0386, Vol. 23, Nº. 5, 2017, págs. 380-394
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
This article relates to the author's project “transdemocracy”. It starts with a discussion of “transconstitutionalism” and its limits. Transconstitutionalism concerns the fact that multiple legal orders of the same or different kind are simultaneously involved with the same constitutional issue or case, i.e. issue or case concerning basic rights or legal limitation and control of political power. Constitutional problems, thus go beyond the state and entangle several legal orders, although no new constitution arises in this context. The article points out the limits of transconstitutionalism in an asymmetric world society so as to seek new alternatives beyond it. Two alternatives are considered: post‐constitutionalism, which demands transcendence of today's world society and thus negate constitutionalism in general, and transdemocracy, which is rather immanent to our social formation and claims to be complementary to transconstitutionalism. Because the author prefers the second alternative, the article begins to outline an approach to transdemocracy that goes across state boundaries and beyond “We the People”, that is popular sovereignty, in order to emphasize the sustainable responsiveness for other peoples in the same world society. It is a question of sustainability of democracy. In this context, the author intends to develop an ecological approach to democracy with the background of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, but from a heterodox, critical perspective
