Societal Constitutionalism: Background, Theory, Debates

Abstract The article provides a systematic outline and refinement of societal constitutionalism (SC), one of the frameworks emerged in contemporary legal theory to analyse constitutional phenomena. After an introduction in Section 1, Section 2 summarises SC’s theoretical background, namely the debates on the Economic Constitution (2.1), legal pluralism (2.2), systems theory (2.3), and the work of David Sciulli (2.4). Section 3 explains SC’s analytical limb, which on the one hand criticises some tenets of state-centred constitutionalism (3.1); and on the other hand identifies functions, arenas, processes, and structures of a constitutionalised social system (3.2). Section 4 turns to SC’s normative limb, pointing to some constitutional strategies that increase social systems’ capacities of self-limitation (4.1); and develop a law of inter-constitutional collisions (4.2). Section 5 addresses the main competing approaches and criticisms, which are based on state-centred constitutionalism (5.1); on international/global constitutionalism (5.2); and on contestatory/material constitutionalism (5.3).