Modern sovereignty is often treated as a stable and timeless legal condition, naturally embodied in the nation-state. Yet this assumption fits uneasily with the historical experience of Central Europe. The Habsburg Empire, stretching across the heart of the continent, defied standard theories of singular sovereignty and exposed the fragility and contingency of the state itself.
In this seminar, Natasha Wheatley examines how modern ideas of sovereignty emerged not from stability, but from constitutional experimentation, imperial collapse, and the practical problem of how states come to an end. From the revolutions of 1848 to the post–First World War settlement, the Habsburg lands became a testing ground for new legal and political approaches to statehood. The discussion focuses on how the dissolution of a dynastic empire turned Central Europe into a laboratory for post-imperial sovereignty and a new international order of formally equal nation-states. It traces the origins of enduring tensions in international law, particularly the assumption of the state’s juridical continuity despite historical rupture. Revisiting this Central European experience invites a rethinking of sovereignty not as an ahistorical legal fact, but as a concept shaped by crisis, reinvention, and political time.
Guest speaker: Natasha Wheatley (Princeton University) is a historian of modern European and international history, specializing in intellectual and legal history, Central Europe, and the history of international law. Her work examines the transformation of sovereignty and international order in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to the interwar period and the legacies of empire.
The speaker will participate online.
Date: 16 April 2026, 5:30 pm
Venue: Hunyadi János terem
----------------------------------------------
MCC students can earn credit for actively participating in the event, provided they read the required chapters and paper(s) and prepare three questions for the Q&A session of the research seminar.
Questions related to the required reading must be submitted to Kálmán Pócza at pocza.kalman@mcc.hu by 11:00 PM on 15 April, 2026.
Required Reading: Please contact Kálmán Pócza to obtain the electronic version of the paper.
Submission Deadline: 15 April 2026, 11:00 PM
Previous Research Seminars:
- Martin Loughlin (London School of Economics): Against Constitutionalism
- Nigel Biggar (Univeristy of Oxford): What’s Wrong with Rights?
- Asanga Welikala (University of Edinburgh): The Common Good and Comparative Constitutional Laws
- John Wyatt (Faraday Institute Cambridge): Right To Die?
- John Larkin (former Attorney General for Northern Ireland): Judicial Power in the United Kingdom
- Michael Freeden (University of Oxford): Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking
- Lee J. Strang (Ohio State University): Originalism's Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution
- Gonzalo Candia (Catholic University of Chile): The Constitution-Making Process in Chile 2019-2024
- Sergio Verdugo (IE University of Madrid): Is it time to abandon the theory of constituent power?
- Aileen Kavanagh (Trinity College Dublin): The Collaborative Constitution
- Scott L. Cummings (University of California Los Angeles): Lawyers and Movements
- Stephen Tierney (University of Edinburgh): Constituent Power in Federal States
- Stefan Auer (University of Hong Kong): European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency
- Dieter Grimm (Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin): A View from the Bench: Personal Reflections on the Practice of Constitutional Adjudication
- Yuan Yi Zhu (University of Leiden): Revisiting the British Origins of the European Convention on Human Rights
- David Edmonds (University of Oxford): Effective Altruism: A Philosophical Reckoning
- Anna Lukina (London School of Economics and Political Science): The Society of Angels and the Coordinative Function of Law
- Jacob Williams (University of Oxford): Post-liberalism: A Genealogy
2026. április 16. 17:30 - 19:00
Twitter
