Interpretive Challenges to the Total Constitution: Sovereignty, Supremacy and the Politics of Textualism in Europe

This article critically examines the role of constitutional interpretation in sustaining and contesting the model of total constitutionalism within the EU. It explores how interpretive approaches associated with the constitutionalisation of the European legal order become vulnerable where their underlying normative assumptions are unevenly shared or historically contingent. Against the backdrop of Europe’s differentiated development of constitutional cultures, the article shows how textualist and formalist interpretive approaches have been mobilised to reassert sovereignty through the language of constitutional supremacy and identity. It argues that these interpretive conflicts expose broader tensions within European constitutional discourse, raising questions about the relationship between supremacy, sovereignty, and democratic legitimacy, and the viability of supranational constitutionalism detached from its political and societal foundations.