The Cambridge Handbook on the Material Constitution

Description

Despite a long and venerable tradition, the material constitution almost disappeared from constitutional scholarship after the Second World War. Its marginalisation saw the rise of a normative and legalistic style in constitutional law that neglected the role of social reality and political economy. This collection not only retrieves the history and development of the concept of the material constitution, but it tests its theoretical and practical relevance in the contemporary world. With essays from a diverse range of contributors, the collection demonstrates that the material constitution speaks to several pressing issues, from the significance of economic development in constitutional orders to questions of constitutional identity. Offering original analyses supported by international case studies, this book develops a new model of constitutional reality, one that informs our understanding of the world in profound ways.

Marco Goldoni is Senior Lecturer in Legal Theory at Glasgow University. He is the author of The Legacy of Pluralism (2020, with M. Croce) and The Materiality of the Legal Order (2022). He is joint general editor of the journal Jurisprudence and co-editor of Law and Politics. Michael A. Wilkinson is Professor of Law at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is the author of Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe (2021). He has held visiting professorships at Cornell, Paris II, the National University of Singapore and Keio University. His work has been translated into Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Turkish.