Trust and mistrust as opposing approaches in constitutional law research

This paper uses the concepts of trust and mistrust to describe two antagonistic manners of approaching and analyzing constitutional matters. Conditioning the whole subsequent research process, these basic ideas usually imply fundamental differences in the way the corresponding research results will be sought. It is therefore necessary to consider them from the standpoint of its methodological influence on the way constitutional law as a disciplinary field with its own (scientific?) purposes is conceived. Assuming that constitutional law deals with the problem of the political, one should specifically reflect on how the efforts in our field are permanently determined by the researcher’s position within the trustful/mistrustful spectrum, and to that extent, how these efforts can be conducted in accordance with the requirements that its object -the political- demands. Consequences for interdisciplinary work and for the definition of a research ethos derive from these questions too.