1. What is Comparative Constitutional Law about?
András Jakab
27 July -- 1 August 2015

2. Purposes of Comparative Constitutional Law
helping the law-maker (legislator, constitution-maker): German origins of post-socialist constitutions
helping the (constitutional) court: German influence (Klaus Stern and Hungary) (problems: time-consuming, misunderstandings, languages, cherry-picking, legitimacy; but it makes a good impression)
university subject: widening the horizon (likely to face foreign laws + understanding better his/her own system)
constructing legal theories (theories are normally expected to fit several countries) (cf. Friedrich Koja, Allgemeine Staatslehre, 1993)
unification of laws, common constitutional values (EU, Venice Commission, Strasbourg): globalising, but national identities
27 July -- 1 August 2015

3. Methods and Sources
1. comparing the texts of constitutions, statutes; problems: semantische Verfassungen; does not show the full picture -- legal and non-legal context
2. case law
3. living constitutional law: including political practice; funktionale Rechtsvergleichung (Ernst Rabel, challenge and response)
4. meta level: comparing constitutional scholarship (typical questions, style, sources)
merely studying foreign law is not comparative law, just the first step
Max Rheinstein: „Auslandsrechtskunde ist normbezogen-deskriptiv, Rechtsvergleichung dagegen problembezogen-funktional”
macro comparison (styles, sources of law)
micro comparison (individual institutions)
27 July -- 1 August 2015

4. Selection of Countries
comparability (China, Saudi Arabia)
traditionally influential constitutions (Germany, US, France)
politically influential countries (UK, but some consciously ignore the UK in lack of comparability)
countries similar to the analysed one and an outsider standard (Ran Hirschl)
27 July -- 1 August 2015

5. Short History of Comparative Constitutional Law
 Aristotle, describing 158 city states of his time (polis), but only Athens remained (he used all materials for his Politics)
 Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, 1748: explaining the differences of laws from antiquity and on different continents with real life circumstances (weather, culture, economy)
 Gottfried Achenwall, 1749, „Abriß der neuesten Staatswissenschaft der vornehmsten europäischen Reiche und Republiken“ (non-legal)
 Johann Heinrich Gottlieb von Justi, 1762: „Vergleichung der europäischen mit den asiatischen und anderen vermeintlich barbarischen Regierungen” (economics, governance studies)
end of 18th century: birth of written constitutions: this makes comparison easier but it also narrows the perspective; when writing a new constitution, drafters always check old ones and foreign ones
German speciality: „Das gemeine deutsche Staatsrecht”, „Gemeines deutsches Staatsrecht” (Deutscher Bund: ; Heinrich Zöpfl, Johann Ludwig Kübler, Heinrich Albert Zachariä)   
Allgemeine Staatslehre: Georg Jellinek, 1900
Julius Hatschek, Allgemeines Staatsrecht auf rechtsvergleichender Grundlage, 1909, vols 3
Gerenal comparative law normally done by private lawyers (Lambert, Zweigert, Kötz)
27 July -- 1 August 2015

6. Infrastructure of Research
 institutions: Paris, 1895, first department dedicated to comparative constitutional law
1924 Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, Berlin (since 1949 in Heidelberg), since 1929 Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht [other important journals: International Journal of Constitutional Law, European Constitutional Law Review, Europäische Grundrechte-Zeitschrift)
learned societies: IACL (International Association of Constitutional Law); SIPE (Societas Iuris Publici Europaei)
27 July -- 1 August 2015

7. Neighbouring Subjects
1. comparative government and politics (vergleichende Regierungslehre)
2. constitutional theory (the present course will contain elements from this)
3. allgemeine Staatslehre (next slide)
4. political philosophy (more abstract, human nature, human condition)
5. constitutional politics: de constitutione ferenda
6. comparative administrative law
27 July -- 1 August 2015

8. Allgemeine Staatslehre
a general and complex (legal and non-legal) description of the state, in order to define basic constitutional concepts, the most important of which is the „state“
sometimes a mixture of description and prescrption, facts and norms
either based on comparison or on „inherent internal logic of the state“
Hans Kelsen: only legal (Koja)
Karl Doehring: international law
Hermann Heller: not „allgemeine“, it cannot be general
criticism: 1. essentialism (there is no such thing as the „state“, there are only „state in a legal sense“, „state in a political science sense“, „state in an economic sense“); mixture of methods (method as typical argument, different languages), 2. useless (we rather need constitutional theory), 3. it is based on presuppositions from the time before constitutionalism (state of emergency)
purpose: helping constitutional reasoning (Hilfswissenschaft) vs a subject on its own right 
27 July -- 1 August 2015

9. Structure of the Course
countries, one country per session (describing constitutions one after the other – difficult to contrast)
topics: easier to compare
Concept of the Constitution
Constitutional Interpretation
Sovereignty
Democracy
The Rule of Law
Nation
27 July -- 1 August 2015

10. Literature
Friedrich Koja: Allgemeine Staatslehre (Wien: Manzsche 1993)
Constance Grewe – Hélène Ruiz-Fabri: Droits constitutionnels européens (Paris: PUF 1995)
Norman Dorsen e.a. (eds.): Comparative Constitutionalism: Cases and Materials (St. Paul, MN: Thomson/West 2003)
Bernd Wieser: Vergleichendes Verfassungsrecht (Wien: Springer 2005)
Vicki C. Jackson – Mark V. Tushnet: Comparative Constitutional Law (New York: Foundation Press 2nd ed. 2006)
Aalt Willem Heringa – Philipp Kiiver: Constitutions compared: an introduction to comparative constitutional law (Antwerpen e.a.: Intersentia 2nd ed. 2009)
Armin von Bogdandy – Pedro Cruz Villalón – Peter M. Huber (eds.): Ius Publicum Europaeum (Heidelberg: C.F. Müller 2007) vols I-II.
Michel Rosenfeld – András Sajó (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford: OUP 2012)
27 July -- 1 August 2015

11. Research Chair and Director Institute for Legal Studies
András JAKAB
Research Chair and Director
Institute for Legal Studies
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
(Budapest)
Schumpeter Fellow
Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (Heidelberg)
27 July -- 1 August 2015