ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an example of a sociology of law that focuses on the cultural significance of legal and constitutional discourse. It explores different ideal types of constitutions that can be extracted from the empirical reality of legal and social practices. According to Kaarlo Tuori's key note European integration through law has generated at least five different types of constitution: the economic constitution; the juridical constitution; the political constitution; the social constitution; and the security constitution. Whereas the juridical constitution is defined in terms of autonomy of the legal system, the economic, political, social and security constitutions are thought to represent law's relatedness to other social systems. In the perspective of a cultural sociology of law, the four constitutional ideals are considered empirically relevant and culturally significant. The legal model of the social constitution is, a less individualized and globalized one. In a way, it seems to be the least 'individualizable' and 'globalizable' of the four constitutional ideal types.
