Dr Signe Larsen

Background:

I joined Magdalen College as a Fellow by Examination in Law in 2020. Before that I was a Max Weber Fellow in Law at the European University Institute. I was educated in law, politics and philosophy at the LSE, the New School for Social Research, Bard College Berlin and the University of Copenhagen.

Research:

My research is concerned with the study of constitutions in a theoretical, historical and comparative perspective. In my recent monograph, The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union (OUP 2021), I engage with the question of the constitutional nature of the European Union. I argue that the general assumption that the EU is unique, or sui generis, because it is neither a state nor an ordinary international organisation, is based on a flawed understanding of both history and constitutional theory. It is flawed in particular because it assumes the state to be the only constitutional form of political modernity. I show in contrast that the EU is a federation, and that the federation is a political form that has both a long history and a constitutional theory in its own right. It is a separate ‘genus’ in the ‘family’ of political associations, which also includes the two other main political forms of modernity: the empire and the state. In my book, I present the constitutional theory of the federation and show that it allows us to make better sense of the EU and its legal and political problems than existing theories.

I am currently pursuing a new research project on empire and public law. By incorporating insights from history and social science on colonialism and imperialism, I aim to develop a public law theory of empire that can provide us with a better understanding of the legacies of imperialism in constitutional law, including its transnational dimensions.

Selected publications:

• Signe Rehling Larsen, The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union (Oxford University Press in 2021).
• Signe Rehling Larsen, ‘Varieties of Constitutionalism in the European Union’ (2021) Modern Law Review, volume 84, Issue 3, pages 477-502
• Signe Rehling Larsen, ‘The Material Constitution of Federations’ in the Cambridge Handbook on the Material Constitution, edited by M. Wilkinson and M. Goldoni, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
• Signe Rehling Larsen, ‘The European Union as “Militant Democracy”?’ in The European Constitutional Imagination, edited by J. Komárek, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• Also published in iCourts Working Paper Series, No. 232, 2021.