Constitutions Rights

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

How are constitutions crafted, maintained, modified, and ultimately made to matter? What goals – both general and specific – do leaders have when writing constitutions, and under what conditions are those goals likely to be achieved? Do constitutions serve purposes beyond those that leaders anticipate for them? Is constitutionalism supportive of or at odds with democracy? Does what kinds of rights are included in a constitution matter? How do constitutional courts work and what difference do they make? How and why do the answers to these questions vary across countries and time? This course explores these and other questions through a comparative examination of the theory and practice of constitutionalism in democracy. The course is divided into two parts. The first focuses on the "building blocks” for studying constitutions and rights in comparative perspective. We review the basic issues and institutions involved in constitutionalism and the “new” constitutionalism (including rights, constitutional courts, and judicial review), consider the relationships among them, and examine some of the key scholarly debates regarding constitutions, constitutional courts, and constitutionalism. We then explore the origins and roles of constitutions, and the relevance of courts with constitutional or judicial review powers, in five polities that vary in terms of the type of critical moment at which the constitution was written: the United States (from scratch), Germany (under occupation), Brazil (post-authoritarian), Hungary (post-communist), and South Africa (post-apartheid). Our goal will be to understand how distinct founding conditions influence constitutional politics. The course concludes by applying the lessons we have learned about constitutionalism to Iraq. Throughout, we retain a focus on how and why constitutions and courts have advanced or impeded the exercise of civil, political, social, and/or economic rights.