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Political Constitutionalism and Legal Constitutionalism—an Imaginary Opposition?
Alex Latham-Gambi 
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume: 40, Issue: 4, Pages: 737 - 763
Swansea University Author:
Alex Latham-Gambi
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DOI (Published version): 10.1093/ojls/gqaa046
Abstract
This article argues that the opposition between political and legal constitutionalism can be traced to a cleavage in what philosophers have called the ‘social imaginary’: the shared understandings that underpin social life. Since social imaginary understandings are by their nature nebulous and ill-d...
| Published in: | Oxford Journal of Legal Studies |
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| ISSN: | 0143-6503 1464-3820 |
| Published: |
Oxford
Oxford University Press (OUP)
2020
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| Online Access: |
Check full text
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa55327 |
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| Abstract: |
This article argues that the opposition between political and legal constitutionalism can be traced to a cleavage in what philosophers have called the ‘social imaginary’: the shared understandings that underpin social life. Since social imaginary understandings are by their nature nebulous and ill-defined, political and legal constitutionalism should not be thought of as competing theories or heuristic models, but – more abstractly – contrasting ways of imagining the political world. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, I argue that my claim is supported by the way in which legal constitutionalism embedded itself as the governing idea in the US and in France, and also by the failure of the ‘new Commonwealth model of constitutionalism’ to yield a genuinely distinctive alternative to political and legal constitutionalism. |
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| Keywords: |
political constitutionalism; legal constitutionalism; social imaginary; US Supreme Court; French Constitutional Council; new Commonwealth model of constitutionalism |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Issue: |
4 |
| Start Page: |
737 |
| End Page: |
763 |