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Constitutional Law in Practice: Regional Perspectives (Intensive)

Overview

Module description

Designed to pull together expertise on diverse jurisdictions, this module is taught by several members of staff as well as invited professors and its syllabus varies from year to year reflecting contemporary developments. Each week, with the help of a specialist and materials available online in advance, you will discover how perennial problems that constitutionalism is meant to address persist in a diverse range of polities across the globe.

Indicative module syllabus

  • Focus on the UK: Brexit
  • European Union in Crisis
  • The Russian Constitutional System: Complexity and Asymmetry
  • Constitutional Crisis in Central and Eastern Europe
  • Focus on the Americas: Constitutionalism and Non-Human Rights in the Americas
  • Multi-nationalism, Multiculturalism and Multiplicity: The Canadian Case
  • Focus on Turkey: Authoritarian Constitutionalism?
  • Focus on the Islamic Republic of  Iran: Revolution and Religion
  • Focus on South Africa: How Political Emancipation and a Progressive Constitution Have Not Delivered Social Justice
  • Focus on Australia: Colonial Legacies
  • Focus on Israel: Basic Laws, Religion and Ethnicity
  • Focus on Greece: Constitutionalism and the Sovereign-Debt Crisis

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • demonstrate knowledge of the constitutional history and current practice in selected countries, regions and supra-state entities
  • critically appraise the function of constitutionalist discourse in the justification of prevailing political and economic models, state-to-state interventions (nation-building, aid conditionality etc), situations of constitutional ‘exceptionalism’ (ie declarations of states of emergency, coups d’états) etc
  • engage in the comparative study of constitutional adjudication through specific, in-depth case studies from a range of countries.

Recommended reading

  • N. Dorsen et al., Comparative Constitutionalism: Cases and Materials (St Paul: West Publishing, 2003).
  • D. Franklin and M. Baun, Political Culture and Constitutionalism: A Comparative Approach (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995).
  • J. Goldsworthy, Interpreting Constitutions: A Comparative Study (Oxford University Press, 2006).
  • R. Hirschl, Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2004).
  • T. Koopmans, Courts and Political Institutions. A Comparative View (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003).
  • P. Legrand and R. Munday (eds) Comparative Legal Studies: Traditions and Transitions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
  • M. Rosenfeld (ed.) Constitutionalism, Identity, Difference, and Legitimacy: Theoretical Perspectives (Duke University Press, 1994).
  • M. Rosenfeld and A. Sajó, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law (OUP, 2012).

Articles/book chapters

  • U. Baxi, ‘Constitutionalism as a Site of State Formative Practices’ (2000) 21 Cardozo Law Review 1183.
  • W. B. Ewald, 'The Jurisprudential Approach to Comparative Law. A Field Guide to ‘Rats’', American Journal of Comparative Law 45 (1998) 701-707.
  • G. Frankenberg, ‘Comparing Constitutions: Ideas, ideals and ideology - toward a layered narrative’ (2006) 4(3) International Journal of Constitutional Law 439-459.
  • P. W. Kahn, ‘Comparative Constitutionalism in a New Key’ (2002-3) 101 Michigan Law Review 2677-2705.
  • D. Kommers, ‘The Value of Comparative Constitutional Law’ (1976) 9 John Marshall Journal of Practice and Procedure 689-695.
  • P. Legrand, ‘Public Law, Europeanisation, and Convergence: Can Comparatists Contribute’, in P. Beaumont, C. Lyons and N. Walker (eds), Convergence and Divergence in European Public Law (Oxford: Hart, 2002).
  • S. Levinson, ‘Preserving Constitutional Norms in Times of Permanent Emergencies’ (2006) 13 Constellations 59-73.
  • A. Peters and H. Schwenke, ‘Comparative Law Beyond Postmodernism’ (2002) 49 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 800-834.
  • F. Schauer, ‘On the Migration of Constitutional Ideas’ (2004-5) 37 Connecticut Law Review 907-919.
  • William E. Scheuerman, ‘Carl Schmitt and the Road to Abu Ghraib’ (2006) Constellations 108-124.
  • R. Slagstad, ‘Liberal constitutionalism and its critics: Carl Schmitt and Max Weber’, in J. Elster & R. Slagstad (eds.), Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge UP, 1988) 103-130.
  • A.-M. Slaughter, ‘A Global Community of Courts’ (2003) 44 Harvard International Law Journal 191.
  • J. Waldron, ‘Foreign Law and the Modern Ius Gentium' (2005) 119 Harvard Law Review 129-147.
  • N. Walker, ‘Culture, Democracy and the Convergence of Public Law: Some Scepticisms about Scepticism’, in P. Beaumont, C. Lyons and N. Walker (eds), Convergence and Divergence in European Public Law (Oxford: Hart, 2002).
  • ‘A Conversation between U.S. Supreme Court Justices’, 3(4) International Journal of Constitutional Law, 519.
  • ‘Symposium on Constitutional Borrowing’, edited by Barry Friedman and Cheryl Saunders in (2003) 1(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 177 et seq.
  • ‘Symposium on Contextuality & Universality: Constitutional Borrowings on the Global Stage' (1999) (3) University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law.