In the debate on how the new information and communication technologies impact on democratic politics the role played by the digital architecture seems to be underrated. In particular, while a lot of attention has been paid to the possibilities that new technologies open up to democratic action,...

After having outlined the main arguments put forward by Bruce Ackerman in "The Decline and Fall of the American Republic", this paper assesses how effective are some of the proposals advanced in order to counter the dangers of the American presidency: the introduction of a Deliberation Day and...

Co-authored by Marco Goldoni (University of Glasgow) and Christopher McCorkindale (University of Strathclyde), this paper posits a (very British!) call to arms, and does so in five steps. In part A we address the need for constitutional fictions by which the many surrender political power to the...

This paper has been organised in six sections. The first one delineates the material methodology of studying the constitutional order by juxtaposing it to other ‘political’ approaches and it offers a reconstruction of the two legal theories from which it draws its inspiration. Then, the...

The Euro Crisis has granted a new role to the European Central Bank (ECB) on top of the previous one: from regulator of monetary policy in the Eurozone to active participant in the governance of the common currency area. In light of the relevance of the latter role, some of the decisions of the...

The new economic governance of the Eurozone has heavily impacted on social rights, in particular in the most indebted Member States. This chapter reconstructs the logic behind the attack upon social rights by adopting a materialist approach (i.e., critique of the political economy) and it...

The article adopts the approach of the cultural study of law as developed mostly (but not exclusively) by Paul Kahn in order to explain the potential for charisma of contemporary central banks. The analysis focuses on the European Central Bank (ECB) and on Draghi's famous statement: 'we will do...

The chapter selectively reconstructs the prevalent views on Marxism and the political economy of law with the aim of showing that, despite a number of shortcomings, the Marxist tradition still represents an important contribution to critical thinking. Indeed, the main concern of the chapter is...

The question of the European common good (or public interest) is rarely posed. This is due, probably, to the hybrid nature of the EU. Its multilayered institutional nature makes the problem of how to track European public interests much more challenging, at least when compared to the national...