Constitutional Legitimacy and Credible Commitments in the European Union.

The idea that the European Union must not adopt a constitution is gaining ground in current legal research on European constitutionalism. The N-C (No Constitution) thesis is being forcefully defended, in particular, by authors in the‘contextual’ or‘law in context’ tradition. However, likewise using a‘contextual’ methodology, in this article I argue that the N-C thesis is in many regards misplaced. In this work, I defend the idea that Europe must adopt a constitution for reasons of credibility. I also try to show the main pitfalls of the N-C thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]