This conference will critically and comparatively engage with international and European Union law as vehicles through which state sovereignty is shaped, constrained, and, in some cases, disrupted within current legal and political systems.
Against the backdrop of increasing globalisation and the deepening integration of law, this event will explore the growing tension between the autonomy of national constitutional regimes and the influence of a framework of supranational legal standards. Traditionally, international and EU law have been constructed to promote peace, cooperation, human rights and the rule of law. However, their overwhelming influence is raising issues regarding the influence of external actors, democratic legitimacy, and the erosion of constitutionally defined self-determination.
At the conference, law will be described as a medium of both governance and intervention - a device that enables coordination and controls compliance simultaneously. This ambivalence positions legal norms at the centre of a broader discussion about control, legitimacy, and consent within the state system.
The aim is to examine the structural and normative implications of legal integration by framing supranational law as a collaboration between authority and obligation. For the discussions, we adopt a comparative constitutional perspective. Particular attention is given to the experiences of Central and Eastern Europe, given that these constitutional and political trends have posed new challenges to our understanding of sovereignist approaches as revolutionary developments in national and supranational law. Specific cases centred on Hungary, Poland and Serbia reflect the various ways in which constitutional systems respond to international and EU legal pressures and how sovereignty is reframed, as well as where the limits of legal integration are contested or reaffirmed.
The overarching objective of this conference is to create an interdisciplinary forum in which we can explore whether international and EU laws are in fact working mainly as frameworks for cooperation, tools of constraint, or vehicles for intervention – and what this means for the future of the European state-centred legal order and for the world.
*The event is private and by invitation only.
