Triangular Constitutionalism: The Consequences of Constitutional Pluralism for Domestic Constitutional Thought

Though constitutional pluralism has become well established as a way of thinking about EU constitutional law, its lessons have yet to be properly internalised in national constitutional discourse. The aim of the ‘triangular constitutionalism’ outlined here is threefold: first, to wean national constitutional thought off the solipsism that imagines that national constitutions can be thought of and engaged with in isolation, cut off from the European legal orders. Secondly, to provide a theoretically sound framework for the application of constitutional pluralist thought within a given legal order, rather than from an unmoored and freestanding epistemic perspective. Finally, to offer an account of the interactions between legal orders in Europe that does not depend only on isolated cases of conflict between powerful actors (though these can be important), but also on the daily workings of constitutionalism, at the periphery as much as at the centre.