The Failure to Grapple with Racial Capitalism in European Constitutionalism
Editors
Jan Komarek
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Description
This chapter grapples with the absence of the concept of racial capitalism in European constitutionalism in spite of centuries of racial subordination in European colonies abroad and discrimination towards ethnic minorities at home. The rise of the European Economic Community in the late 1950s is often portrayed by scholars as a means to correct the legacies of racial and gender subordination that culminated with the Holocaust and the Second World War. Purportedly, the European Community seized the opportunity to start anew with a modernist and quasi-federal constitutional project inspired by the United States and its progressive Warren Court. However, by bracketing the dark sides of US federalism and building bridges across the Atlantic to construct European constitutionalism, prominent scholars such as Eric Stein, Mauro Cappelletti, and Joseph H. Weiler dismissed how the jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court over time protected the legal entitlements of slaveowners, businesses, and states at the expense of slaves, workers, women, and children. This selective reception of US constitutionalism, which portrayed law only as a tool of emancipation rather than oppression, has obscured the embeddedness of racial capitalism in the European political economy.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855480.003.0015
Publication Date
3-2-2023
Book Title
European Constitutional Imaginaries: Between Ideology and Utopia
Publisher
Oxford Academic
Keywords
Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, European Constitutionalism, Comparative Federalism, Racial Capitalism, Judicial Review, International Law, International Human Rights
Disciplines
Comparative and Foreign Law | International Humanitarian Law | International Law | International Trade Law | Law | Law and Society
Recommended Citation
Nicola, Fernanda Giorgia Dr. and Miller, Jeffrey, "The Failure to Grapple with Racial Capitalism in European Constitutionalism" (2023). Contributions to Books. 341.
https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_bk_contributions/341