Constitutional Evolution in the Crisis of the Early Twenty-First Century

Beginning with some general remarks on law and evolution, the paper queries the Westphalian narrative of modern state formation, centered on the evolutionary concept of normative constraints of morally neutralized processes of evolutionary adaptation. In light of long-time evolutionary change, a brief sketch follows concerning the democratic transformations of international and national constitutional law. But there can be no jurisgenetic progress without the threat of jurispathetic regression. The internal and external limits to democratic constitutionalism have come to the fore since the effective political establishment of a global neoliberal regime in the mid-1970ts. Europe is no exception but is still in a process of constitutional evolution that is open to alternative pathways enabled by the egalitarian normative constraints of global, regional and national constitutional and public law