Acknowledgements

This is an ambitious book. I began to write about what in continental Europe is known as the “constituent power” from an orthodox constitutional legal scholarly perspective and I suddenly found myself writing on the origins of public power in constitutional democracies: a comprehensive investigation.

Indeed, in pursuing the topic on constitutional creation I have mainly followed the contributions provided by authors trained in the legal tradition, but my analysis also draws on information and insights from a wide range of scholarly disciplines, most notably: history, historical sociology, economics, and political philosophy. I have, in fact, tried to imitate the approaches of such constitutional legal theorists that I find more appealing and that I admire most, true giants of my discipline such as Bruce Ackerman, Peter Haberle, and Joseph Weiler, to whom I shall be eternally in debt.

I have constructed this book in the institution in which I have taught and researched for most of my academic life: the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Even though I am not very old, I still belong to that generation of legal scholars that had the fortune to get a position in earlier stages of their career, who have spent more time locked in their office reading and writing than travelling around the world in search of a postdoc or applying for a research project. Accordingly, I have to thank my law department for providing me the stability to develop my theoretical inquiries. I should here follow by thanking the many mentors, professors, and colleagues that I have had the great pleasure to meet within the frame of the Pompeu Fabra: Marc Carrillo, Carles Viver, Alejandro Saiz Arnaiz, Victor Ferreres, Josep Joan Moreso, Josep Lluis Marti, Jorge Malem, Ricardo Caracciolo, Ferran Requejo, Fernando Guirao, Pau Salvador Coderch, Josep Maria Vilajosana, Tomas de Montagut, Pau Bossacoma, Albert Lamarca, Aida Torres, Neus Torbisco, Francesca Maria Pou, Marc Sanjaume, Maribel Pascual, Rosa Lucas, Luis Javier Mieres, Marisa Iglesias, Josep Capdeferro, Alfons Aragoneses, Josep Pich, Ivan Carlo, Nico Krisch, Jaime Lluch, Armin von Bogdandy, and Roberto Gargarella.

My sedentary professional life (my personal life is another matter) has not deprived me of attending several international congresses, particularly those organized by the International Society of Public Law, in which I presented some ideas that I have introduced in the following pages. I had the opportunity there to discuss with prominent specialists on the issue of constitutional foundations and their transformations such as Antoni Abad Ninet, Vito Breda, Joel Colon-Rios, Oran Doyle, Zoran Oklopcic, Yaniv Roznai, Nikos Skoutaris, Sergio Verdugo, and Rivka Weill. I'm especially grateful to Oran Doyle and his comments on recent Irish constitutional developments that I have included in Chapter 5 and the same I would say to Sergio Verdugo concerning the epigraph devoted to the Chilean case. I am, however, the only one to blame for any gaps or flaws in those sections. I'm also in debt to Professor Jose Luis Caballero Ochoa whose invitation in Spring 2016 to the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City was an inspiration for the development of my considerations on the contemporary constitution-making processes that can be found in the following pages. In a different vein, I will be eternally grateful to professor Haberle's disciples (who have now become very important professors) Lothar Michael and Markus Kotzur, for their help during my research stages in Bayreuth. My special thanks to Richard Albert, who always believed in my task as a researcher and whose support was essential for this book to see the light. Such an outcome would have not been possible either without the staggering work of my publishers in Routledge. Also essential was the support of Mathew Barton for his enduring help, reviewing my English. I wish also to thank my friends Alex Perera, Ana Hernandez, Felip Marti, and Jaume Renyer (the latter is also my brother-in-law) who, coming from quite different disciplines, crucially inspired me in composing the ideas of this contribution.

I reserve the biggest thanks for my family, which, being not so numerous, I would like to mention in its entirety: my father, Josep Lopez Marti, my mother, in memoriam, Maria Rosa Bofill, my grandmother, Maria Marti, my brother, Raul Lopez Bofill, my wife, Hye Young Yu, and my son, Marcel Lopez Yu. Thanks to all of them for their love.

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Source: Bofill Hector Lopez. Law, Violence and Constituent Power: The Law, Politics and History of Constitution Making. Routledge,2021. — 270 p.. 2021

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