Abstract

The essay embraces the view that legal orders are undergoing processes of constitutionalization beyond the nation state. These tendencies go in two different directions. Constitutions are growingly shaped beyond national borders, both as the result of transnational political processes, and as the result of "private" processes taking place in the global society. Due to this transnationalization, constitutional sociology is faced with three main challenges: 1) to empirically explore those processes of constitutionalization taking place beyond the nation state 2) to develop a theory of constitutionalism for the transnational society 3) to spell out the sociological pre-conditions needed to develop normative perspectives in both law and politics.