Towards a theory of European constitutional interpretation. A transatlantic dialogue.

TOWARDS A THEORY OF EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION. A TRANSATLANTIC DIALOGUE.

Background
American Legal Realism. Former Supreme Court Justice Holmes' contention that the 'life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience' has resonated for over a century in American constitutional scholarship. Indeed, the school known as American Legal Realism (ALR), criticizing the 'transcendental nonsense' (K. Llewelyn) of classical Begriffsjurisprudenz has exerted a lasting influence on American legal thought. Although most American scholars would not agree with some of the more extreme realist contentions, caricatured in assertions like the law is determined by what the judge had for breakfast, a majority does share the distrust of the application of some mechanisms of logic (in particular, the syllogism) to law, and acknowledges that the U.S. Supreme Court (SC) makes political decisions in some cases, or at least that politics matter in constitutional adjudication.

European realism? In Europe, however,a similar evolution cannot be traced. Surely, Europe has created its own critics of rigorous deductive legal thought: the proponents of Interessenjurisprudenz (Von Jhering, Gény) tried to descend from the the 'heaven of legal concepts' and more recently, different scholars have enrichedthe critical tradition - to mention a few: Perelman, Sacco, Esser, Scholten, ter Heyde, Van Gerven. A handful of scholars in Scandinavia were even coined Legal Realists (Hägerström, Ross). Nonetheless, '(c)ontinental legal theory is uncannily 'other' for an American' (D. Kennedy, Critique of Adjudication, p. 92). An interesting question thereforeis whether contemporary European legal thought can accommodate the challenged proposed to classical (European) legal thought by ALR and its progeny.

An important academic query. If European legal thought does not succeed in accommodating these insights, the question arises whether it is able to adequately represent the judicial process. This question is not only important from a jurisprudential or philosophical perspective, it also has practical ramifications, not least for the balance between legal certainty and judicial flexibility and the related question of how judges should decide concrete cases. Even more fundamentally, the legitimacy of the judiciary itself is at stake. The understanding of judicial interpretation lies at the heart of what our Rechtsstaat is, and at the foundation of what the law itself is, can and should be.

Accordingly, the question raised in this project is whether European legal thought can and has sufficiently and adequately responded to the challenges of ALR and its progeny. However, the primary purpose of this project is not to develop a general jurisprudential theoryof adjudication. Therefore, a twofold limit on the object of analysis has been developed, together with some restrictions pertaining to the authors representing the approach of my inquiry. Taking account of the aforementioned restrictions, I will nonetheless endeavor to reconstruct a European theory of interpretation.
Limitations
Object: constitutional adjudication. To begin with, I will focus only on constitutional adjudication. In chapters two and three, I will further curtail the scope of research to the case law on the right to freedom of speech. This will allow me to approach my subject both systematically - that is, applying a range of theoretical thoughts to a particularresearch object - and comprehensively - that is, as a research object receptive to complete and independent analysis. 
The systematic nature of the approach is further enhanced by the choice of four Europeanconstitutional courts: the German Constitutional Court (BVerfG), the French Constitutional Council (FCC), the Belgian Constitutional Court (BCC) and one of the Constitutional Courts in Eastern Europe. Whereas the BVerfG appears to be a 'natural' choice, as it is widely recognized to have developed a substantial theoretical framework on the basis of which it conducts its jurisprudential analysis, opting for the HCC, the BCCand the FCC might require some further explanation. Even if the BCC andthe FCC are harder to analyze in terms of interpretive theory, these two Courts were chosen for methodological reasons. It is to be expected that because of their continental civil law background, the thrust of ALR cannot be easily parried in their jurisprudence. An extra Eastern European Court, for its part, is analyzed because of the (possibly) distinct features as a constitutional court in a post-communist country: currently, the Hungarian Constitutional Court is the first choice, both for practical reasons (e.g. the availability of translations), and for reasons ofa more contentious nature (e.g. the Court often having been perceived as 'activist').

Approach: ALR, Dworkin and Critical Legal Studies. When subjecting European constitutional jurisprudence to thelegal realist challenges, I will not only rely on ALR classics (e.g. Dewey, Llewelyn, Cohen, Frank), but alos on two post-realist jurisprudential strands, i.e. the Dworkinian line of thought and the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement (e.g. Kennedy, Tushnet). Although both strands offer widely diverging claims on constitutional adjudication, they undoubtedly are both children of ALR in their skepticism towards rules (which does, however, not imply general skepticism in Dworkin's case). The insights of these American scholars will be tested against conventional doctrinal analysis of European free speech jurisprudence, which I intend to embed in Robert Alexy's jurisprudential account of constitutional rights, which will form the European jurisprudential backdrop against which the conventional doctrinal analyses of free speech cases is conducted.

An original hypothesis.
Hypothesis. The dissertations contends that European free speech jurisprudence fails to theoretically accommodate some of the insights produced by ALR. Although nuanced authors, such as Robert Alexy or Klaus Günther, have tried to remedy this lack of accommodation, they have not succeeded in breaking the 'positivist' hegemony over constitutional interpretation in this area. By implication, this could be a vice the entirety of European constitutional adjudication may be suffering from, thus rendering conventional scholarship on constitutional interpretation deficient. For that reason, I will offer some thoughts striving for a rejuvenated European theory of constitutional interpretation.

Originality. The approach in this dissertation is innovative, or at least original, in three different respects. The project first tries to occupy a relatively unexplored nichebetween legal theory and constitutional law. Although much has been written about constitutional adjudication in general,l free speech within constitutional adjudication, and interpretation in legal theory, this dissertation investigates a specific area of constitutional adjudication, i.e. free speech adjudication, which creates a comprehensive body of analysis, amenable to systematic theoretical inquiry. Second, the interdisciplinary approach is radical, in that although classical doctrinal tools will be used, my analyses will also rely on other disciplines, not limited to the legal field and thus establish my dissertation as a profoundlymulti-faceted product. Third, and related to the second point, the substance of the examination  is innovative to the extent that it is duly inspired by ALR, a strand of thought often thought useless for, or atleast inapplicable to, European jurisprudence.

Outline andmethodologyMy dissertation will be informed by what has been called a reconstructive methodology (cf. Ricoeur, Gadamer, Habermas). However, an inquiry into jurisprudence itself, and particularly one into interpretation, confronts the problem of methodology being interwoven with more 'substantive' issues. Therefore, the methodological remarks one can find in each chapter description, particularly those in chaptersthree and four, where the methodological issues are most challenging, are a boiled down version of the extensive elaboration of this reconstructive methodology which I purport to offer in the dissertation itself.

Chapter I: Institutional and Constitutional Differences. The issue addressed in the first chapter range from typically constitutional(procedural) matters, such as jurisdiction, standing, legal consequences, etc. to more general legal-political matters, such as composition andappointment, legal decision-making processes, and position of the constitutional court within the broader political structure of the states involved. A similar, more summary, analysis will be undertaken for the SC and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for, although they are notthe focus of the broader analysis of this dissertation, a basic understanding of their structure is warranted as, on the one hand, SC case-law will often become an indirect benchmark against which different theoriesof interpretation in the third chapter will be tested and, on the other hand, the case-law of the ECtHR is thought to have had pervasive effectson constitutional jurisprudence.
Unsurprisingly, this chapter adoptsa procedural, but also politico-legal method, trying to reach a structural institutional understanding, which is necessary, for it is arguably an important factor in assessing different modes of interpretation, and more precisely in understanding how European legal thought has not been influenced to the same extent by ALR as American legal thought. In accordance therewith, the European model might be able to sidestep some ALR challenges early on in the analysis.

Chapter II: Free Speech Doctrine. The second chapter will be constitutionally analytical in nature, and accordingly adopt a classical doctrines (i.e. legal dogmatics in the Alexyan sense) perspective. Here, I will systematically and in some detail set out the case-law as regards freedom of expression of the four courts under review. More precisely, I will investigate the scope, the limits and the general outline of the right to freedom of expression in European constitutional adjudication. To the extent that the constitutional courts rely on ECtHR jurisprudence, this case-law will be elaborated and commented upon. Far less in detail, I will outline the SC First Amendment jurisprudence on free speech, as a familiarity with the case-law will be necessary for a better understanding of the third chapter.

Chapter III: Free Speech Interpretation. The third chapter is divided into three main sections.
The first section will offer an analysis of the state of scholarship with regard to constitutional interpretation, not only in Europe, but also in the United State, covering, albeit summarily, the aforementioned theoretical strands. The second sectionwill put the European jurisprudence to the test. It will assess the adequacy of free speech doctrine, primarily as conceived in Alexyan jurisprudential terms. Here, I will examine which particular U.S. insights are missing in the Alexyan account and whether the alleged shortfalls need to be remedied. If so, I will inquire whether such an attempt has been made, and if so, whether the offered theoretical remedies are adequate. Inthe final section, I turn to the cases. Accordingly, the central issue here will be which particular American insights are apparently importantin light of European free speech cases and nonetheless missing in European jurisprudence. 

Methodologically, a myriad of perspectives is taken up here. The first section is to that extent descriptive, that it described what the theories I investigate are claiming (even if these claims are evaluative). Nonetheless, in building up their respectivetheories, (mostly implicit) normative presuppositions had an important role to play: it will be my undertaking in the second section then, not only to analyze the extent to which American insights have been ignored by Alexyan theory, but also to point out why he has in fact ignored them. In this reconstruction, I will take both institutional and jurisprudential factors into account. Nonetheless, I am bound to reach the outer corners of jurisprudence as an explanatory device and will therefore turn to the systematized case-law in the third section, where the different theories are held 'as constants' while I analyze to what extent the case-law itself (and its own normative presuppositions) can accommodate the raised American challenges. My third chapter thus reads theory and case-law through the lens of a legal reconstructive method.

Chapter IV: towards a theory of European constitutional interpretation. My fourth, most ambitious chapter then purports to substantiate the title of my dissertation. I will first investigate whether it is possible to construe an adequate representation of constitutional practice of the four European Constitutional Courts. To accomplish this task, I explain whether and why it is possible to expand the scope of the inquiry, digging, albeit in a fragmentary fashion, into question such as: is free speech a special case? Can constitutional adjudicative theory be generalized from a theoretical perspective at all? What is interpretation? In the end, I will try to offer some thoughts on a more adequate theory of European constitutional adjudication in general, which duly takes the insights of ALR into account.
Methodologically, one could say that this chapter offers a philosophical hermeneutic of the European judicial process, adjudication included, which allows me to take up an explicitly normative stance, i.e. evaluating particular normative presuppositions laid bare in the previous chapter(s). I will try to offer an account of what Dworkin would call the best interpretation of interpretation. At the same time however, this chapter is tentative, because in further my normative claims, I will collide with philosophical issues similar to those in the second section of the previous chapter, in particular with the problem of philosophical entanglement of method and substance. This is an issue I do not intend to solve, but I will offer some thought on it, particularly inrelation with the jurisprudential reach of my own reconstruction of European interpretation.