This Article is dedicated to what is arguably one of the most significant tests to which constitutionalism has been subject to in recent times. It examines the theoretical and practical challenges to constitutionalism arising from the profound technological changes under the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in our emerging algorithmic society. The unprecedented rapid development of AI technology has not only rendered conventional theories of modern constitutionalism obsolete, but it has also created an epistemic gap in constitutional theory. As a result, there is a clear need for a new, compelling constitutional theory that adequately accounts for the scale of technological change by accurately capturing it, engaging with it, and ultimately, responding to it in a conceptually and normatively convincing way.

The aim of this article is to open a new way of understanding corruption by examining its place within the law and culture of the European semi-periphery, with a focus on inter-war Romania. My intention is to operate a twofold displacement of the analysis of the anti-corruption and the status of constitutional practice in this context. First, I aim to reposition the question of political corruption within a jurisprudential and legal historical context. In this way I inquire what is the legal theoretical importance of political corruption in a post-dependency context? In other words, what can the representation of corruption entail for law, and for a particular legal historical trajectory within the European periphery. Second, I move towards exploring the context of the inter-war period as well as the discursive construction of political corruption within the law and through the fascist criticism levelled against it.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has been criticised increasingly for its approach to international law. While much literature focuses on reluctance to apply international law (ie refusing direct effect), this criticism also includes interpretation, arguably a more contentious area. The Court interprets international treaties through either the Vienna Convention or its own teleological method, with the latter increasingly applied. The legitimacy of applying localised methods of interpretation to international treaty law is debated in scholarship. Whether the Court’s case law applying international law is Völkerrechtsfreundlichkeit (friendliness to international law) is the focus of most contributions in this area. This Article seeks to move beyond that debate by demonstrating the Court should in all instances seek to achieve the legal imperatives of certainty and justice. It is explained that justice divides into ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ forms. Whilst ‘thin’ justice is widely accepted and amounts to treating like cases alike, substantive (‘thick’ justice) outcomes are inherently debatable. The Article proves the Court is failing to clearly distinguish cases (‘thin’ justice) and that case law is uncertain. There are also significant questions concerning ‘thick’ justice. The Court has been subject to criticism for substantive outcomes in this area, with the Commission and Council even seeking to limit its role. With case law that is uncertain and appears unjust it is argued that there is failure in this ‘integral part of EU law.’ The Court is now under increased pressure, and it is uncertain how it will respond. There are certainly cautionary lessons to be learned concerning the importance of paying proper attention to justice and certainty for EU law as a whole, and beyond.

Inspired by the contributions of Poul Kjaer and Kerry Rittich to this Special Issue, this article extends the reflection on the role and potential of law for social transformation. More specifically, I attempt to build on a revised framing of the constitutive role of law to draw the contours of a transformative instrumentalism, where law functions as an instrument for the articulation of political and social objectives. My account shifts the attention from transformative law’s form to its content, based on the premise that engagement with ‘political’ economy necessarily entails an engagement with the substantive standards that shape social relations of production and define the nature and extent of exploitation. Yet, I argue that the endorsement of law’s constitutive function and the turn to law’s content need not lead to the kind of instrumentalism that exhausts itself in particular policy reforms or prescriptions to assume control over processes of legal coding. Relying on a tentatively redrawn conception of the constitutive role of law that draws from both legal institutionalism and Marxist perspectives, I suggest that instrumentalism may instead be transformative by prioritising material ends, leaving open the question of the concrete legal and institutional forms that will materialise them. The directions of such transformative instrumentalism involve an element of ‘mobilisational democracy’ against the insulation of the economy from democratic control; reforms generative of collective subjects and centres of democratic power (‘non-reformist reforms’); and a focus on the planning and coordinating function of law among diverse – but united in their objective – legal rationales and institutional forms.

Legal theory must not merely describe our world; it must also assist us acting in it. In this paper, I argue that teaching legal theory should show law students how to do things with legal theory. My pedagogical approach is contextual and historical. Students learn how to use theory by seeing how past jurists acted in their particular worlds by changing dominant concepts of law. Most introductory legal theory courses are organised by what I will call the usual story of jurisprudence. In this story, great thinkers in rival schools of legal thought attempt to answer perennial questions about the nature of (the concept of) law. In this story, the thick context of our world recedes beyond the horizon of theory. I argue that critical genealogy can let us critique this usual story and its unspoken assumptions of morality, politics and history. Amia Srinivasan's account of ‘worldmaking’ is especially compelling in its emphasis on critical genealogies’ capacity to transform our representational practices (and thus open up new possibilities for action). Critical genealogy also has certain pedagogical ‘uses and advantages’ for teaching legal theory in law schools. Here, context is method. The teacher must defend their political choices of context – choices that are naturalised and so beyond critique in the usual story of jurisprudence. By making these choices explicit, students are invited to both challenge the teacher's choices of context and critique their own common law education. This pedagogical approach also encourages students to experiment in ‘worldmaking’ themselves, and so cultivate a creative capacity to use legal theory to change the world through transforming their representations of it.