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Prof Tarun Khaitan

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time) and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course will study the practice of constitutionalisms in the Global South. ‘Constitutionalism’ will be understood in a thin sense, to include political precommitments to a wide variety of values (including democracy, liberalism, theocracy, and socialism) through a diverse range of constitutional actors (including courts, political parties, guarantor or ‘fourth branch’ bodies, the military, federal units, social movements, the political executive, and legislatures). 

One of the key objectives of the course is to decentre Euro-American practice in comparative constitutional discourse. To do so, it will examine the recent attempts to theorise Southern constitutionalisms—including, whether there is anything distinctively ‘Southern’ about the practice of constitutionalism in such a large and diverse part of the world. Illustrations of comparative constitutional practice will be drawn from a wide canvas of Southern jurisdictions— sometimes juxtaposed against a Northern example—with a focus on constitutional innovations that have been especially prominent in Southern jurisdictions. The particular experience of the Global South with colonialism and its implications for constitutionalism will also be studied.

20 hours of seminars in the AT. 2 hours of seminars in the ST.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the AT.

On Theoretical Concepts

• Berihun Gebeye, A Theory of African Constitutionalism (OUP 2021) ch 1, ‘Legal Syncretism as a Theoretical Framework for African Constitutionalism’
• Ran Hirschl, ‘How Universal is Comparative Constitutional Law?’ in Comparative Matters: The Renaissance of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press 2014) 192-223
• Philipp Dann, Michael Riegner & Maxim Bönnemann, ‘The Southern Turn in Comparative Constitutional Law: An Introduction’ Dann/Riegner/Bönnemann (eds), The Global South and Comparative Constitutional Law, (OUP 2020) 1-38
• David Landau ‘Institutional failure and intertemporal theories of the judicial role in the global south’ in David Bilchitz and David Landau, The Evolution of the Separation of Powers (Elgar 2018) 31-56
• Naz Modirzadeh ‘[L]et us All Agree to Die a Little’: TWAIL’s Unfulfilled Promise’ (forthcoming 65 Harvard International Law Journal)

On Constitutionalism in Practice

• Adem Abebe, ‘Tackling Winner-Takes-All Politics in Africa: Inclusive Governance through Constitutional Empowerment of Opposition Parties’ in T Ginsburg et al eds, The Constitutional Design of Elections and Parties (forthcoming 2024)
• Sergio Verdugo & Marcela Prieto, The dual aversion of Chile’s constitution-making process’ 19(1) International Journal of Constitutional Law (2021) 149
• Ngoc Son Bui, Constitutional Change in the Contemporary Socialist Word (OUP 2020) (Chapter 7: The Exceptional Model: China)
• Mirjam Künkler & David S Law, ‘Islamic Constitutionalism: Iran’ in David Law, Constitutionalism in Context (2022)
• Gabrielle Appleby & Eddie Synot, ‘A First Nations Voice: Institutionalising Political Listening’ (2020) Federal Law Review 529

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.