Interpretive Challenges to the Total Constitution: Sovereignty, Supremacy and the Politics of Textualism in Europe

This article critically examines the role of constitutional interpretation in sustaining and challenging the model of total constitutionalism within the European Union. It does not offer a general critique of total constitutionalism but instead highlights how its reliance on expansive judicial reasoning and morally charged principles can render it vulnerable in contexts where its normative assumptions are not shared or historically embedded. Against the backdrop of the uneven development of constitutional cultures across Europe – particularly in Central and Eastern Europe where formalist and positivist traditions have shown enduring resilience – the article focuses on constitutional developments in Hungary and Poland. It shows how textualist and formalist interpretive approaches, while historically rooted, have been strategically mobilized to reassert state sovereignty under the guise of defending constitutional supremacy. These developments expose the fragility of a conceptual model that tends to conflate judicial authority with constitutional integration. The article argues for a recalibration of European constitutional discourse, one that resists the over-juridification of constitutional meaning and reaffirms the democratic and societal foundations of constitutional orders.