lpbr.net http://www.lpbr.net/2013/02/europes-constitutional-mosaic.html EUROPE’S CONSTITUTIONAL MOSAIC by Neil Walker, Jo Shaw and Stephen Tierney (eds.).Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2011. 404pp. Hardcover $124.00. ISBN-10: 1841139793. Reviewed by Mihaela Serban, School of Social Science and Human Services, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Email: mserban [at] ramapo.edu. pp.54-57 In the crowded field of European studies, this edited volume stands out as an illustration of constitutional pluralism in the pan-European area. The volume is the outcome of an extended seminar series held at Edinburgh Law School in 2008-2009, which attempted to go beyond the usual focus on the European Union to explore the overlapping networks of constitutional authority within the entire European legal space. Three key features set it apart: its pluralist approach, specifically the concept of nested national, transnational and supranational constitutional structures characterized by multiple sources of normativity and conflicts for centrality (Shaw, p.139); its public law, legal theory and political science perspectives; and its pan-European scope. The volume belongs to a relatively recent body of literature that merges the legal pluralist framework with legal globalization, public international law, and constitutional law. The editors – all from the University of Edinburgh – brought together eleven authors from across the Western part of the continent, most of them public law and legal theory experts, with two political science voices. The volume – at a hefty 400 pages – is divided into six parts and 13 chapters (two chapters per part), with an introduction but no conclusion. The six parts focus on EU’s constitutional dimensions, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the wider Europe, Europe below the state, Europe and the world, and case studies (criminal law and labor law). The Introduction, written by two of the editors, Neil Walker and Stephen Tierney, builds upon the authors’ earlier work on constitutionalism and pluralism and is the key to understanding the value added by this book. The starting point is well known by now: the failure of the European constitution, the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon, all within the larger context of post-national constitution-building and constitution-branding. The premise of the book is that an exclusive focus on the EU offers an incomplete picture of current constitutional developments across the continent. Understanding Europe’s present and future includes an exploration of other normative threads as well, primarily the relationship with the Council of Europe and developments at the substate and transnational levels. The volume aims to paint a better picture of Europe as a “more complex, fluid and multi-dimensional category” embedded in “dense networks of legal authority within and beyond the continent” (p.3), and away from state-centered constitutionalism. The metaphor that captures this category is “constitutional mosaic,” where the focus is not on traditional or contemporary theories of constitutionalism, but on a [*55] “constitutional mode of analysis” (p.7). The mosaic’s representational and visual aspects contain an element of “thick description” that captures the current moment of European transformation. Walker and Tierney identify four key features of this constitutional mosaic: it is based on plurality rather than singularity, diversity rather than uniformity, heterarchy rather than hierarchy, and fluidity rather than fixity (p.9). The major challenges raised by the constitutional mosaic include authority, legitimacy, identity, and contestability. The first part focuses on the EU, specifically its constitutional dimensions and the relationship between the EU and its member states. In chapter 2, Cormac Mac Amhlaigh discusses the three main trends within the EU constitutionalist discourse – legalist, neo-republican, and processual. He argues that all three fail to recognize explicitly the essential signifier of the constitutional idea – sovereignty – and that a sovereignty-based conception of EU constitutionalism provides a better picture of the EU, because it is sovereignty that keeps the European constitutional mosaic in place.