BOOK REVIEW: THE CHURCH AND THE CONSTITUTION FOR EUROPE: ON THE MARGIN OF JOSEPH WEILER’S “UN’ EUROPA CRISTIANA”


11 Colum. J. Eur. L. 451 (2005)

Un’ Europa cristiana – Un saggio esplorativo.Milano:
Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2003. Pp 208.

Eric Stein. Hessel E. Yntema Professor of Law, Emeritus, University of Michigan Law School.

Europeans delight in historical controversies with current political implications-angry, often personal, and quickly forgotten. The “Historikerstreit” (the quarrel of historians) of the 1980s about the proper place of the Holocaust in German history is one example. Although the debate over the inclusion of a reference to the Christian heritage of Europe in the Preamble to the new Constitution for Europe has some of the earmarks of such a quarrel,’ Professor J.H.H. Weiler would question such a comparison. He believes that behind the textual controversy lurks a weighty issue bearing upon the state of democracy and spirituality in the European Union.