Identity and transformation of modern law

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Author: Elena Lukyanova

DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2020-3-130-147

Keywords: constitutional identity; constitutional integrity; defensive constitutionalism; international legal thinking; internationalization of constitutional law; national identity

Abstract

This article is about the reasons, features, and prospects for the development of so-called defensive constitutionalism. The author tried to generalize the results of legal disputes and scientific discussions about identity. She also highlighted the main ones and focusing on certain shades that would help to understand their causes and features. For example, on the problem of the correlation between the concepts of national and constitutional identities, on the defensive-sovereign nature of the reasons for the transformation of one concept into another, and on the inadmissibility of mixing them. A particular form of defense constitutionalism is artificial constitutional identity. The article analyzes its European samples in Hungary and Latvia. To assess the limits of judicial interpretation in identity disputes, it is proposed to introduce a criterion of constitutional integrity. At the same time with lawyers, political scientists have also concluded that the problem of identity is becoming more acute in the world. They analyze the processes of globalization and it is in them that they find the origins of this phenomenon. Thus, the roots of the legal debate are deeper than just a dispute about the relationship between national and supranational legislation. They are just a natural consequence of geopolitics, which, in turn, is expressed not only in legal conflicts, but is embodied in the ways, forms and content of legal regulation in General and constitutional law in particular. Because every legal process is just a mirror of the public process. In the modern world, society is increasingly moving beyond its national borders, gradually gaining common supranational cultural ideological and philosophical features. Accordingly, the law goes the same way, not easily and sometimes painfully developing its new supranational identity. The article combines two subjects – political science and law. At first glance, it may seem that they do not have an obvious connection. But this is not true. According to the author, both processes are inseparable parts of the big picture of the modern world. Without their connection, it is impossible to understand what is happening and adequately foresee the future. Just as it is impossible in modern conditions of progressive knowledge of the world to evaluate any phenomena in the narrowly closed framework of a single science.

About the author: Elena Lukyanova – Lawyer, Doctor of Sciences in Law, Professor, Faculty of Law, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.

Citation: Lukyanova E. (2020) Identichnost' i transformatsiya sovremennogo prava [Identity and transformation of modern law]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.29, no.3, pp.130–147.

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