Weber, Habermas, and transformations of the European state : constitutional, social, and supranational democracy / John P. McCormick.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: theorizing modern transformations of law and democracy -- Critical theory and structural transformations -- Critical theory and the supranational constellation -- Law, democracy and state transformation today -- The historical logic(s) of Habermas's critique of Weber's "sociology of law" -- The fragility of legal-rational legitimacy -- Moral underpinnings of formal law -- The possibility of rationally coherent Sozialstaat law -- Secularization, commodification and history -- Excursus: the transformation of Habermas's theory of history -- Philosophy of history and the sociology of law -- Conclusion -- The puzzle of law, democracy and historical change in Weber's "sociology of law" -- The public/private law distinction and "modern" law -- History as confirmation -- Contestation of legal categories -- Legal history as contrast -- Continuity with the Present -- Legal limits on power: separation and application -- Organizations, special law and the law of the land -- Weber, law and social change -- Formal and substantive rationalization of law -- Formal v. substantive law and the Sozialstaat -- Conclusion -- Habermas's deliberatively legal Sozialstaat: democracy, adjudication and reflexive law -- Habermas on language and law, lifeworld and system -- Beyond formalist and vitalist notions of constitutional democracy -- Rational and democratically accessible adjudication -- Selecting 19th or 20th century paradigms of law -- Conceptual paradigms and historical configurations of law -- Conclusion -- Habermas on the European union: normative aspirations, empirical questions and historical assumptions -- Global problems to be solved by EU democracy -- The history of the state as guide to the present -- The form and content of EU democracy -- Limits of Habermas's theory of EU democracy -- Conclusion -- The structural transformation to the supranational Sektoralstaat and prospects for democracy in the EU -- Legal integration and the supranationalist model -- State-centrism--EU law constrained -- The European Sektoralstaat model -- (a) Legally facilitated race to the bottom or march to the top? -- (b) Comitology---open, public and equitable deliberation? -- (c) Multiple policy Europes -- Democracy, the EU Sektoralstaat and further questions -- Conclusion -- Conclusion: Habermas's philosophy of history and the future of Europe -- Index.