LAUSR

ABSTRACTConstitutional pluralism has become a pivotal heuristic in framing and evaluating the interaction between different modes of legal authority within and beyond the state. This paper explores the legal ontologies and normative aspirations from which these transnational constitutional imaginaries emerge. An inquiry into the constitutional paradigms of MacCormick, Maduro and Kumm reveals three distinct ontologies: law, respectively, as (i) an institutional; (ii) a relational; and (iii) a meta-normative phenomenon. This ontological perspective elucidates a shift in transnational constitutional discourse: from its focus on pluralism and heterarchy (the ‘pluralization of constitutionalism’), the paradigm gave rise to a rationalist renaissance of monism under meta-constitutional principles (the ‘constitutionalization of pluralism’). These different templates translate the jurisprudential dichotomy between positivism and normative legal theory to a transnational language, and articulate opposing visions of...