The authors focus on the interrelations between the sense of individual identity and the sense of national identity. Their aim is to find a common European legal culture. The processes of Europeanization have been proceeding on the legal level, wherein the CJEU took a prominent role, and on the level of intergovernmental decision-making. In the aftermath, the EU may be comprehended in terms of the rights-based union and problem-solving entity although the emergence of the values-based community has been stymied and the transnational public spheres are rather thin. This caused a democratic deficit and provoked debates about the EU as a post-democratic polity. There are disputes whether this oddity of the EU indicates its nobility or perversion. But the fact remains that the Eurocitizens in their post-sovereign states became lost in the Hegelian extreme terms of the universal-formal rights. Their individual interests made them especially exposed to the shocks of the economic crisis. This makes it necessary to address the issue of the common European constitutional culture.

This volume analyses current debates concerning problems in the nature, justification, and legal protection of human rights for minorities, with reference to the issues surrounding social milieu as a source of any legitimized law, which is in itself in need of legal recognition as well as being an object of legal protection. With contributions from a global network of scientists across several continents, the work examines the debate dedicated to the understanding of the normative framework, expressed in terms of human rights that guarantee autonomous action in public and private for minority groups as well as individuals. The chapters go on to study the particular claims that need to be audible and visible for others in the public sphere with reference to the legal protection of human rights. The work concludes with the completion of an interpretative circle debating the issues of legal consensus and legal identity with respect to the specificity of the patterns and modes guiding human interactions. Going beyond the legal analysis to discuss communication strategies in human rights, this collection will be of great interest to those studying the philosophy and theory of law, practical philosophy in general, political sciences and theory of democracy.

The book tackles significant problems that each historian of law faces in the light of present decline of philosophical, ethical and ideological canons in the overall context of western civilization. The issues discussed in the book manifest themselves in the question whether the "democratic turn" is a real or just a virtue one. Democracy generally means governance by the people - but who are the people? What kind of governance by the people can be claimed as democratic - all of the various types that exist or only a single, chosen one? What - if any - is the normative issue of such a governance? Democracy, after all, is not a simple descriptive model of governance; it is deeply rooted in our preferences and hence normative patterns of conduct, which are not yet to be understood as the norm but rather as founding principles. Democracy is a thoroughly normative model. It is always as constructed and uttered in the picture of life at the same time.