Lawrence on Constitutional Pluralism at Cambridge Symposium

Professor Jessica Lawrence participated in the inaugural Symposium on Constitutional Pluralism organized by the Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies on 15 October 2018.

In a paper entitled ‘Constitutional Pluralism’s Normative Core’ she posits that discourses of constitutionalism are far from being neutral descriptions of transnational legal relationships. Instead, these discourses are built around a normative core containing a series of largely unacknowledged claims about legitimacy and community. 

Professor Lawrence argues that framing discourses “ask us to reassess the phenomena they describe in accordance with a particular set of conceptual commitments… and in turn help to entrench specific ideologies.”