14 and 15 November 2019, The Swedish Network for European Legal Studies, Stockholm, conference 30 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Rule of Law in the European Union (programme-pdf), Jan Komárek presented paper The rule of law and liberal legalism in (the post-communist) Europe).

Abstract: 1989 opened the possibility to make the Union among the peoples of Europe ever close: to tie them not only through the single market and a nascent monetary union, but to give them a sense of shared polity through a constitutional arrangement. This arrangement, I will explain, was however based on liberal legalism, constitutional ideology that fits a particular version of political economy. It favours freedom through contract and individual entrepreneurship over freedom through politics and collective engagement. The current “rule of law crisis”, as some call it, is in fact a crisis of liberal legalism and the measures adopted by the EU institutions and the ECJ in particular, are more likely to exacerbate it than “solve” it.

Related publications:

– Jan Komárek, Waiting for the existential revolution in Europe, (2014) 12 International Journal of Constitutional Law 190–212;

– Jan Komárek, The Struggle for Legal Reform after Communism, LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No. 10/2014.