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Massimo Fichera

20052021

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Research interests

EU constitutionalism, constitutional theory, public law, comparative constitutional theory.

Description of research and teaching

Massimo Fichera is Academy of Finland Research Fellow and Docent in EU Law at the University of Helsinki. His main areas of expertise include European Union law and constitutional theory, in particular the interaction between EU law and Member States' legal orders. In his work, he combines legal doctrinal analysis with legal theory following a law and society approach.

Massimo Fichera's Academy of Finland funded project 'Narratives of Europe as an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice' analyses the nature and purpose of the European Union as a polity through the lens of crisis. Europe's self-constitution as an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice -not as a specific branch of EU law but as an overarching framework- is marked by crises. He looks in particular at six crises: the refugee, economic and financial, rule of law, constitutional identity, boundaries and Brexit crisis. His main claim is that these crises are revelatory of a much deeper truth about the EU: legal-political conflict has been concealed beneath a veil of neutrality in the process of European integration and it is now coming to the surface, as the European project reaches more advanced stages of constitutional integration. The final outcome of the project has been the book 'The Foundations of the EU As A Polity' (Edward Elgar, 2018).

Massimo Fichera has published extensively in the areas of constitutional law, including comparative constitutional law, constituent power, relationship between courts, the area of freedom, security and justice and the notion of transnational law.

He has held research fellowships at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law (2014), the Faculty of Law of the University of Lund (2017), the European University Institute (2017-2018), the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) of the University of Edinburgh (2018). He has also been Emile Noël Global Fellow at the Jean Monnet Centre for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice, NYU (2018).

He is member of the Advisory Board of the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives (Faculty of Social Sciences, Helsinki) and an External Expert for the ERC Project 'Crosslocations', led by Prof. Sarah Green (Faculty of Social Sciences, Helsinki). He has also qualified at the Italian Bar and holds a PhD in Law from the University of Edinburgh.

He is currently writing his third monograph, entitled 'The EU Judiciary and Constitutional Time- The Significance of Time in Constitutional Change' (Edward Elgar).

 

Fields of Science

  • 513 Law
  • EU constitutionalism
  • Constitutional theory
  • Legal Theory
  • Comparative Constitutional Theory