Brexit and the Challenges of a ‘Post-Sovereign’ Legal Landscape

Abstract

This chapter explores issues of law and governance at state level, and at levels above and below the state. It focuses on the European Union as a striking example of supranational law, as well as on the issue of sovereignty in a post-Brexit world. It argues that neither a retreat into a nostalgic Brexiter vision of sovereignty, nor the EU’s ‘new legal order’ can provide conclusive sovereignty and constitutional arrangements, because both systems are ‘unsettled’ (Neil Walker’s term). Neither law, constitutional theory, nor legal theory has settled the issue of sovereignty. EU law overlaps and intermingles with national law. The United Kingdom will lack constitutional stability, whether it remains in the European Union or not.