Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era

Vicki Jackson

Explores the role of constitutions and constitutional law in this changing legal environment, analyzing complex currents of convergence, resistance and engagement with the transnational in the United States, Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, India, South Africa and elsewhere.
Explores multiple transnational phenomena (including national law that has influence beyond its borders, as well as an expanded array of international law) affect our understanding of the role of constitutions and of courts in deciding constitutional cases.
An authoritative study of comparative constitutional law by one of the most important scholars of domestic and comparative constitutional law.
Defines how international comparative experiences are relevant to constitutional analysis and discusses in detail the multiple possible connections between international law and constitutional law.

Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era

Vicki Jackson

Description

Constitutional law in the United States and around the world now operates within an increasingly transnational legal environment of international treaties, customary international law, supranational infrastructures of human rights and trade law, and growing comparative judicial awareness. This new environment is reflected in increasing cross-national references in constitutional court decisions around the world. The constellation of legal orders in which established constitutional regimes operate has changed - there are more bodies generating law, more international legal sources, and more multi-national interactions that bring into view various legal orders. How do these transnational phenomena affect our understanding of the role of constitutions and of courts in deciding constitutional cases? Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era explores this question, looking at constitutional court decisions from around the world, and identifying postures of resistance, convergence or engagement with international and foreign law. For the United States, the book argues for cautious engagement by the Supreme Court with transnational sources of law in interpreting the national constitution.

Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era offers law school students and professors an authoritative study of comparative constitutional law by one of the most important scholars of domestic and comparative constitutional law. The book defines how international comparative experiences are relevant to constitutional analysis and discusses in detail the multiple possible connections between international law and constitutional law including a comparative overview of constitutional law in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Israel, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era

Vicki Jackson

Acknowledgments and Permissions
A Note to Readers on Citations and Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION: CONSTITUTIONAL COSMOLOGY - CONVERGENCE, RESISTANCE, AND ENGAGEMENT
CHAPTER 1: RESISTING THE TRANSNATIONAL
CHAPTER 2: CONVERGENCE WITH THE TRANSNATIONAL
CHAPTER 3: ENGAGEMENT WITH THE TRANSNATIONAL
CHAPTER 4: CONSTITUTIONAL ADJUDICATION IN THE U.S. SUPREME COURT: WHY ENGAGE THE TRANSNATIONAL?
CHAPTER 5: ENGAGEMENT, U.S. INTERPRETIVE THEORY, AND MULTIFUNCTIONAL
CONSTITUTIONS
CHAPTER 6: ENGAGING THE TRANSNATIONAL: A CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORK
CHAPTER 7: ENGAGEMENT, EQUALITY, AND OLDER CONSTITUTIONS
CHAPTER 8: CONSTITUTIONAL PARTICULARITIES, FEDERALISM, AND THE TRANSNATIONAL
CHAPTER 9: CONSTITUTIONS AS MEDIATING INSTITUTIONS, TRANSNATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL VALUES, AND ENGAGEMENT IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION
Notes
Table of Cases
Index

Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era

Vicki Jackson

Author Information

Vicki C. Jackson is the Thurgood Marshall Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and previously taught at the Georgetown University Law Center as Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law. Professor Jackson is co-author with Professor Mark Tushnet of Comparative Constitutional Law (2d ed. 2006), a leading coursebook, and co-edited, also with Professor Tushnet, Defining the Field of Comparative Constitutional Law (2002). Other books include Federal Courts Stories (2010) (co-editor with Judith Resnik) and Inside the Supreme Court: The Institution and its Procedures (2008) (with Susan Bloch). Professor Jackson has also served as a Vice-President of the International Association of Constitutional Law.

Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era

Vicki Jackson

Reviews and Awards

"There is no better scholar today than Vicki Jackson in helping us understand and appreciate the growing relationship between American constitutional law and the law of the rest of the world. This promises to be the leading book in this great debate." --David Fontana, George Washington University School of Law

"Jackson's book is an inspired invitation to enter into a global constitutional conversation...The book is of momentous importance not only to ongoing debates about resort to foreign and international law within the United States, but to the work of high courts elsewhere in the world." --David Schneiderman, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

"Comparative study is the new frontier in constitutional law scholarship, and Vicki Jackson provides a thoughtful way into it, dismissing simple surrender to comparativism as well as dogmatic opposition. Hers is a fascinating new approach to comparative constitutional law that will engage us for many years." --Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, Supreme Court of Israel

"Impressive in both its breadth and depth, Professor Jackson'sELmeasured approach to judicial engagement with the transnational suggests a way forward in a public debate that has been polarized for far too long." --Melissa Waters, American journal of Comparative Law