Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Claes, Monica --- "Constitutional law*" [2012] ELECD 980; in Smits, M. Jan (ed), "Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012) 223

Book Title: Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, Second Edition

Editor(s): Smits, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804158

Section: Chapter 18

Section Title: Constitutional law*

Author(s): Claes, Monica

Number of pages: 14

Abstract/Description:

The last decade or two have witnessed a tremendous reinvigoration of comparison in the area of constitutional law, both in the real world of legal and judicial practice and as a field of legal scholarship. While the discipline of constitutional comparison is old and can be traced back to Aristotle’s Politeia, legal comparative scholarship has for a long time favoured the field of private law. Comparative lawyers perhaps ascribed to public law a particularism and responsiveness to local values, while private law was seen as embodying common and universal features (Ginsburg and Dixon, 2011, p. 2). Yet, more recently, quite a few new journals have been launched which take comparative constitutional law as their focus of attention (European Public Law in 1995, International Journal of Constitutional Law in 2003, European Constitutional Law Review in 2005, Global Constitutionalism – Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, 2012), and several regional and international associations and networks convening scholars of comparative constitutional law have been set up. A number of casebooks (Jackson and Tushnet, 2006; Dorsen et al., 2003), and textbooks on comparative constitutional law (Grewe and Ruiz Fabri, 1995; Prakke et al., 2004; Carozza et al., 2009; Ginsberg and Dixon, 2011; Ponthoreau, 2010) have seen the light over the past few years, and leading publishing houses have launched new series in comparative constitutional law.