Is a constitution a set of legal rules from which officials obtain guidance for their own conduct and for assessing the conduct of others; or is it the result of ever-negotiable settlements employed to sustain peaceful cooperation? Those who answer the first question affirmatively are considered to be normativists; those who opt for the second suggestion are not. In the history of ideas, constitutional normativism is a rather recent phenomenon, closely attached to modern constitutional law and “judicial review“. Anti-normativism, by contrast, looks back to a longstanding philosophical tradition. While public lawyers tend to understand their trade in normativistic terms, we currently witness a powerful recrudescence of anti-normativistic approaches also among those who practice constitutional law. They know how to push the envelope and respond to normativist pieties with mocking sophistry. Against the backdrop of recent events, the panel wants to contrast these approaches.