Paul Linden-Retek

photo of Paul Linden-Retek.

Associate Professor of Law; Co-director of the Buffalo Human Rights Center

Research Focus:  Constitutional Law and Theory, Comparative Law, European Union Law, Critical Political and Social Theory, International Human Rights, Law and Literature, Refugee and Asylum Law, Transformations of Sovereignty

Links: SSRN, Curriculum Vitae

Contact Information

723 O'Brian Hall, North Campus
Buffalo, NY 14260-1100
716-645-5541
plinden@buffalo.edu

Faculty Assistant: Deborah L. Nasisi

Biography Publications

Monograph

POSTNATIONAL CONSTITUTIONALISM: EUROPE AND THE TIME OF LAW (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Edited Volumes

CRITICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH HABERMAS’S POLITICAL AND LEGAL THEORY (John Abromeit, Matthew Dimick & Paul Linden-Retek, eds., Brill Publishers, forthcoming 2025).

CRITICAL THEORY AND EUROPEAN UNION LAW: THE QUESTION OF POSTNATIONAL EMANCIPATION (Päivi Neuvonen & Paul Linden-Retek, eds., Hart Publishing, forthcoming 2025).

Journal Articles

The Postnational Aspirations of European Law, 73 BUFFALO LAW REVIEW 101 (2025)

Europe and the Federal Conceit, 13(3) JURISPRUDENCE 458 (2022) (review essay)

Neither Trumps nor Interests: Rights, Pluralism, and the Recovery of Constitutional Judgment, 70(3) CLEVELAND STATE LAW REVIEW 393 (2022)

History, System, Principle, Analogy: Four Paradigms of Legitimacy in European Law, 26(3) COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN LAW 1 (2021)

The Refugees We Are: Solidarity, Asylum, and Critique in the European Constitutional Imagination, 22(4) GERMAN LAW JOURNAL 506-33 (2021)

The Subjects of Spatial Statism: Reclaiming Politics and Law in International Entanglement 18(1) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 36-44 (2020)

Cosmopolitan Law and Time: Toward a Theory of Constitutionalism and Solidarity in Transition 4(2) GLOBAL CONSTITUTIONALISM 157-194 (2015)

The Spirit and Task of Democratic Cosmopolitanism: European Political Identity at the Limits of Transnational Law 8(8) CROATIAN YEARBOOK OF EUROPEAN LAW AND POLICY 175-226 (2012)

Supervised Independence and Post-Conflict Sovereignty: The Dynamics of Hybridity in Kosovo's New Constitutional Court (with Steven Hill), 36 YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ONLINE 26-43 (2010)

Book Chapters

A Postnational Bearing: Reflections on European Constitutionalism and Legal Form, in CRITICAL THEORY AND EUROPEAN UNION LAW: THE QUESTION OF POSTNATIONAL EMANCIPATION (P. Neuvonen and P. Linden-Retek, eds., Hart Publishing, forthcoming 2025)

Introduction: The Pasts and Futures of Between Facts and Norms—A Critical Exchange (with John Abromeit and Matthew Dimick), in CRITICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH HABERMAS’S POLITICAL AND LEGAL THEORY (J. Abromeit, M. Dimick, & P. Linden-Retek, eds., Brill Publishers, forthcoming 2025)

‘Safe Third Country’: Democratic Responsibility and the Ends of International Human Rights, in LAWLESS ZONES, RIGHTLESS SUBJECTS: MIGRATION, ASYLUM, AND SHIFTING BORDERS (Seyla Benhabib & Ayelet Shachar, eds., Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025)

At the Borders of the Self: Democratic Iterations as a Theory of Post-National Sovereignty, in IN SEARCH OF THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL (Stefan Eich, Anna Jurkevics, Nishin Nathwani & Nica Siegel, eds., Columbia University Press, 2023)

Constitutional Patriotism as Europe’s Public Philosophy? On Solidarity and Responsiveness in Post-national Law, EU CONSTITUTIONAL IMAGINATION: BETWEEN IDEOLOGY AND UTOPIA, (J. Komárek, ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023)

Judith Shklar's Critique of Legalism (with Seyla Benhabib), THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE RULE OF LAW (J. Meierhenrich and M. Loughlin, eds.) (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2021) 

Book Reviews and Short Essays

Postnational Society and its Law, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW (Hakan Hyden, Ulrike Schultz & Peter Scharff Smith, eds, Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2025)

Differentiation or dialectic: Pluralism and contestation in European economic constitutionalism (with Marija Bartl), EUROPEAN LAW OPEN (2025) (symposium essay)

Book Review, Law in the Fullness of Time, JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY (2025) (reviewing Massimo Fichera, The EU and Constitutional Time: The Significance of Time in Constitutional Change (Edward Elgar, 2023))

Book Review, The Burdens of Love and Time, 198 TELOS 162 (2022) (reviewing Paul W. Kahn, TESTIMONY (Cascade Books, 2021))

Book Review, Our Fleeting Moments: Legal Thought in a Confessional Key, LAW, CULTURE AND THE HUMANITIES 1 (2020) (reviewing James Boyd White, KEEP LAW ALIVE, Carolina Academic Press, 2019))