The Contradictions of Supranationalism: Administrative Governance and Constitutionalization in European Integration since the 1950s
![handle is hein.journals/lla37 and id is 403 raw text is: THE CONTRADICTIONS OF
SUPRANATIONALISM:
ADMINISTRATIVE GOVERNANCE AND
CONSTITUTIONALIZATION IN EUROPEAN
INTEGRATION SINCE THE 1950s
Peter L. Lindseth *
I. INTRODUCTION'
It is common for legal scholars to invoke European integration
as perhaps the most advanced example of the constitutionalization
of a supranational legal order.2 The specifically constitutional
* Associate Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law;
B.A., J.D., Comell; Ph.D. (history), Columbia. I would like to thank my
colleagues at Connecticut, especially Jeremy Paul, Hugh Macgill, Angel
Oquendo, Steven Wilf, Paul Berman, Pat McCoy, Tom Morawetz, and Carol
Weisbrod, for extremely helpful comments during a faculty workshop in which
I presented an earlier draft of this essay. I would also like to thank several
members of the faculty at Columbia, notably Volker Berghahn, George
Berma=n, Walter Mattli, and Robert Paxton, who provided very incisive
comments on the longer work on which this contribution is based (see infra
note 1). © Peter L. Lindseth. All rights reserved.
1. This essay draws primarily from Peter L. Lindseth, The Contradictions
of Supranationalism: European Integration and the Constitutional Settlement of
Administrative Governance, 1920s-1980s (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of
History, Columbia University, 2002) (on file with author), which contains
further discussion of the historical evidence supporting the interpretation
advanced here.
2. In this symposium, see, for example, Laurence R. Helfer, Constitutional
Analogies in the International Legal System, 37 LOY. L.A. L. REV.
(forthcoming 2003) (manuscript at 6, on file with author) (noting the powerful
example of European constitutionalism which he says suggest[s] that 'a
conventional treaty regime, once endowed with a judicial mechanism for
interpretation and enforcement, can be converted by degrees to a genuine
constitutional order'), quoting Robert Howse & Kalypso Nicolaidis,
Legitimacy and Global Governance: Why Constitutionalizing the WTO is a
Step Too Far, in EFFICIENCY, EQUITY, AND LEGITIMACY: THE MULTILATERAL
TRADING SYSTEM AT THE MILLENNIUM 227, 239 (Roger B. Porter et al. eds.,](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/lla37&div=24&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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