Comparative Constitutional Law

by Tushnet, Mark; Jackson, Vicki C.; Dixon, Rosalind; Khosla, Madhav

• ISBN13: 9780197673973
• ISBN10: 019767397X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197673997
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-12-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Designed for use in law school courses, Comparative Constitutional Law introduces fundamental debates on the nature of constitutions, constitutional comparison, and the relationships between constitutions and constitutionalism in its various forms. The book explores how constitutions are made and changed, including recent applications of "unconstitutional constitutional amendment" doctrines, and the role of different institutions - legislatures, executives, publics, as well as courts - in constitutional interpretation and constitutional change. Following a detailed study of the structure and interpretive approaches of national apex courts that decide constitutional questions, the book goes on to consider six subject areas of importance in contemporary constitutionalism: separation of powers and emergencies; federalism and related consociational constitutional arrangements; equality and pluralism; religion; free expression; and positive rights or duties.

Including excerpts of cases and scholarly material from the Global South, Europe, and North America, this volume emphasizes the need to understand the broader sociolegal contexts in which constitutional design and decisions occur. In response to growing trends of democratic retrogression in courts around the world, this new edition provides expanded coverage of abusive constitutionalism, authoritarianism, and illiberalism. It additionally offers insightful discussions on constitutional actors' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic; gender and LGBTQ+ equality issues; and indigenous peoples' rights and environmental rights.

Providing an overview of constitutional law that is both comprehensive and accessible, the fourth edition of Comparative Constitutional Law is an invaluable resource for law students and academics.

Author Biography

Professor Vicki C. Jackson is the Laurence H. Tribe Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard. She regularly teaches and writes about U.S. Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, and Comparative Constitutional Law, and, occasionally, on Constitutional Aspects of the Administrative State in Comparative Perspective; Knowledge Institutions in Constitutional Democracy; Positive Constitutionalism and the United States; Proportionality Review; Gender Equality; and Government Immunities. Her scholarly articles have appeared in leading law reviews (at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and elsewhere), and her books include Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era. She was President of the Association of American Law Schools in 2020 and became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.

Professor Mark Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law emeritus at Harvard Law School. He is the co-author of four casebooks, including the most widely used casebook on constitutional law, has written numerous books, including a two-volume work on the life of Justice Thurgood Marshall and Advanced Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law, Taking Back the Constitution: Activist Judges and the Next Age of Constitutional Law, Why the Constitution Matters, and Weak Courts, Strong Rights: Judicial Review and Social Welfare Rights in Comparative Perspective, and has edited several others. He was President of the Association of American Law Schools in 2003. In 2002, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Rosalind Dixon is a Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales, Faculty of Law & Justice. Her work focuses on comparative constitutional law and constitutional design, constitutional democracy, theories of constitutional dialogue and amendment, socio-economic rights and constitutional law and gender, and has been published in leading journals in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. She is the co-editor, with Tom Ginsburg, of a leading handbook on comparative constitutional law, Comparative Constitutional Law. She is currently the Centre Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law and is the immediate past co-president of the International Society of Public Law.

Professor Madhav Khosla is an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia University. He works on the nature and form of constitutions from a comparative and theoretical perspective. Much of his research comparative constitutional law has focused on South Asia. Professor Khosla studied political theory at Harvard University, where his dissertation was awarded the Edward M. Chase Prize for "the best dissertation on a subject relating to the promotion of world peace", and law at Yale Law School and the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Before joining Columbia Law School, he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.