Współczesne procesy europeizacji prawa w świetle ewolucji ustrojowej państwa nowoczesnego
Contemporary Europeanization of Law as an Aspect of the Modern State's Evolution

Summary/Abstract: The paper claims that the contemporary europeanization of law is an aspect of a broader political process of the continuing evolution of the political systems of European countries resulting in the transmission of sovereign power to supranational organisations. This is demonstrated through the level of interactions between institutions, providing different means of social control over the activity of the political power. The said interactions concern, on the one hand, institutions performing political control and, on the other hand, courts conducting judicial reviews of the states’ activities. Within this context, constitutional tribunals that were established to accomplish the system of judicial review within the nation-state, looking for additional legitimacy which would allow them to extend their prerogatives, started the process of the subordination of the constitutional provisions that are constructed to common European standards, the content of which is determined on supra-national level. Through this mechanism, the true meaning of national constitutional provisions is becoming more and more determined outside the specific countries. This process is influenced both, by the European Court of Human Rights and by the EU Tribunal of Justice. This allows for the empowering of supra-national structures, transforming modern sovereign nation-states into the parts of what might be called after U. Beck and E. Grande, the postmodern “European cosmopolitan empire.” The process seems to be unavoidable unless a substantial change in European intellectual culture appears.

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