Fall 2007

GOV 384N • Comparative Constitutionalism

Course Description

The proliferation of new constitutions in recent years has sharpened interest in a subject that has been around since Aristotle but has not always figured prominently in legal studies. The comparative analysis of constitutions (and related interpretive and structural issues) is now embraced as an essential component of the public law curriculum. This course will explore alternative traditions of constitutionalism, connecting them to the broader political cultures from which they have emerged. It will seek to account for the similarities and differences within the constitutional ideas and arrangements of nations representing widely disparate historical and cultural experiences. It will examine the role contextual variables play in the increasingly controversial practice of using foreign constitutional materials in domestic adjudication settings. It will pursue the question of constitutional identity, one of the least under-theorized questions in the field. And it will consider how the comparative approach might contribute to contemporary debates among constitutional theorists.

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