Comparative Constitutional History

HIS 6416

LAW 6936, section 6136

 

Fall 2005, Wed 9-11 periods (4-7 pm)

Room: CBD 324

 

Elizabeth Dale

edale@history.ufl.edu

http://plaza.ufl.edu/edale

 

Office hours:   Wed    10-11 AM (at law school)

1:30-3:00 PM (at Keene-Flint)

                        Thurs   10-11 AM (at Keene-Flint)

                        and by appointment

 

Offices:           224 at Keene-Flint

                        240E at Law School

Phone: 392-0271

 

 

Overview:

Constitutional history is a well-established, though in recent years much neglected, branch of legal history and comparative studies have long been a fundamental part of that field. But though comparative constitutional history has undergone rejuvenation recently, in its modern guise it is a field of study in search of a methodology.

 

In this seminar on comparative constitutional history we examine a number of different constitutional systems (or constitutional orders) in their historical context.  In the process, we will explore and compare a number of methodologies, including older models (such as functionalism and modernization theory) and newer approaches (the idea of constitutional borrowing, theories of postcolonial constitutionalism, and a variety of discourse theories). While some methods will, in the end, seem more fruitful than others, the goal of this seminar is not to come up with a final, best approach to comparative constitutional history.  Rather it is to introduce the range of available options and consider what other approaches might be possible.

 

The assigned books are listed below, and then under the week we are reading them. Some of these books are, unfortunately, expensive. I recommend you consider sharing purchases with other students, and also consider going on line to Amazon.com, for example, to see if you can find them used.  Articles and constitutions (except as noted) are available on line as a link to this syllabus; some of the journal sites require access through UF, so please familiarize yourself with the library’s off campus access system.  Those materials that cannot be linked will be available as handouts in some convenient place. Materials listed as “additional readings” or “background” are intended to supplement readings for the course, but are not required. They may also help you in beginning your work on your research paper, and may be used for your book review project.

 

Assignments

 

You will be graded on two assignments:

 

  1. A 5-7 page book analysis, on one of the supplemental or background books. This will be worth 25% of your grade for the course and will be due week ten.
  2. A 18-20 page seminar paper, arising out of the materials covered in the course. This will be worth 75% of your grade for the course, and will be due during finals week, on a day we agree on in class. You should discuss possible paper topics with me and have me approve your topic by week 7. I will read and comment on drafts of papers between week 11 and the last week of classes.

 

 

Assigned books:

Brown, Nathan. Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws & the Prospects for Accountable Government  (SUNY Press, 2001).

Brzezinski, Mark. The Struggle for Constitutionalism in Poland (1998).      

Caldwell, Peter C. Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law: The Theory & Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism. (Duke University Press 1997).

Fitzsimmons, Michael P.The Remaking of France: the National Assembly and Constitution of 1791. (Cambridge University Press., 1994)

Jacobsohn, Gary. Apple of Gold: Constitutionalism in Israel and the United States. (Princeton University Press, 1993).

Klug, Heinz. Constituting Democracy: Law, Globalism, and South Africa’s Political Reconstruction.   (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Krasner, Stephen, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton University Press, 1999).

Kuhn, Philip, Origins of the Modern Chinese State (Stanford, 2002).

Moore, Ray A. and Donald L. Robinson, Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State under MacArthur (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Vick, Brian. Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity. (Harvard University Press, 2002).

Wood, Gordon,  The Creation of the American Republic (1969, reprint 1998)

 

Articles and primary materials that are assigned for each week are listed below.

 

In addition to the supplemental works listed below, you might find Immanuel Wallerstein, World Systems Analysis (Duke University Press, 2005) and/or Jackson and Tushnet, Comparative Constitutional Law (Foundation Press, 1999) helpful books to read.

 

Assignments:

Week 1: What is a constitution? How can we study comparative constitutional history?

Magna Charta

Golden Bull

“Constitution” and “Constitutionalism” at  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constitutionalism/

Kim Lane Scheppele, “The Agendas of Comparative Constitutionalism,” Law and Courts 13 (Spring 2003): 5-22 at http://www.law.nyu.edu/lawcourts/pubs/newsletter/spring03.pdf

 

Related materials: Law and Society Review 38 (Sept 2004) (special issue on constitutions) (available on line, check UF library e-journals)

 

Week 2: US Constitution

United States Constitution

Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (1969, reprint 1998).

 

Related readings:

            J. Isaac, “Republicanism vs. Liberalism: A Reconsideration,” History of Political Thought 9 (1988): 349-377

            Richard Bellamy and Dino Castiglione, “Constitutionalism and Democracy: Political Theory and the American Constitution,” British Journal of Political Science  27 (1997): 595-618

            Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in colonial Political and Constitutional History (1994)

            Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Politics of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788 (Norton, 1990)

            Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913)

            Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the American Constitution (University of Kansas Press, 1985)

 

Week 3: French Revolution 

Constitution of France, 1791

Fitzsimmons, Michael P.The Remaking of France: the National Assembly and Constitution of 1791. (Cambridge University Press., 1994)

 

Background materials: http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/fran/1871.html

 

 

Week 4: Latin America

Brazilian Constitution of 1824 (handout)

Mexican Constitution of 1824

Gargarella, Roberto. “Towards a Typology of Latin American Constitutionalism, 1810-1860. Latin American Research Review 39 (2004): 141-153 (on line, check UF e-journals).

Caplan, Karen. “The Legal Revolution in Town Politics: Oaxaca and Yucatan, 1812-1825” Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (2003): 255-293 (on line, check UF e-journals)

Schultz, Kirsten. “Royal Authority, Empire and the Critique of Colonialism: Political Discourse in Rio de Janiero (1808-1821). Luso-Brazilian Review 37 (2000): 7-31 (on line, see UF e-journals or UF account with EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier)

Sohrabi, Nader. “Global Waves, Local Actors: What the Young Turks Knew about Other Revolutions and Why it Mattered,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44 (2002): 45-79 (on line, check UF e-journals).

Doorenspleet, Renske. “Reassessing the Three Waves of Democratization,” World Politics 52 (2000): 384-406 (available on line, check UF e-journals).

 

Related readings: Huntington, Samuel. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

Background materials: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook32.html (19th century Latin American resources); http://www.library.yale.edu/Internet/latinamerica.html (more Latin American on line sources)

 

Week 5: 1848

Vick, Brian. Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity. (Harvard University Press, 2002).

 

Background materials: Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions (“Introduction”)

 

Week 6: Meiji Japan

Meiji Constitution of 1889

Nishitani, Kei. THE PROBLEM OF DISCIPLINE IN MODERN JAPAN: AN ESSAY ON THE ETHOS OF MODERNIZATION. Geschichte und Gegenwart [Austria] 18(1999): 147-159 (handout or course reserves).

Miyake, Masaki. JAPAN'S ENCOUNTER WITH GERMANY, 1860-1914: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE GERMAN LEGACY IN JAPAN. European Legacy 1(1996): 245-249 (course reserves).

Masuda, Tomoko; Fraser, A., transl. THE MEIJI CONSTITUTION: THEORY AND PRACTICE. East Asian History [Australia] 1991 (1991): 125-140 (handout or course reserves).

Silberman, Bernard S. BUREAUCRATIC DEVELOPMENT AND BUREAUCRATIZATION: THE CASE OF JAPAN. Social Science History 2(1978): 385-398 (on line, at Jstor).

Quo, F. Q. DEMOCRATIC THEORIES AND JAPANESE MODERNIZATION. Modern Asian Studies  6(1972): 17-31 (on line at Jstor).

Duus, Peter. FOUNDATIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT IN MODERN JAPAN, 1868-1900. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies  28 (1968): 231-237 (on line at Jstor).

Teters, Barbara J. KUGA'S COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN. Journal of Asian Studies 28 (1969): 321-337 (on line at Jstor).

 

Week 7: China 1840-1912

Kuhn,Philip, Origins of the Modern Chinese State (Stanford, 2002).

Scheppele,  Kim Lane, “Aspirational and Aversive Constitutionalism: The Case for Studying Cross-Constitutional Influence through Negative Models.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 1 (2003): 296-324 (available on line, check UF library e-journals).

 

Week 8: Weimar Germany

Constitution of the German Federation (1919)

Caldwell, Peter C. Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law: The Theory & Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism. (Duke University Press 1997).

 

Background reading: “The Weimar Republic”

 

Week 9: Japan, post WWII

Constitution of Japan, 1947

Moore, Ray A. and Donald L. Robinson, Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State under MacArthur (Oxford University Press, 2004).

 

Week 10: Israel

Israel Basic Law

Jacobsohn, Gary. Apple of Gold: Constitutionalism in Israel and the United States. (Princeton University Press, 1993).

 

Week 11: South Africa

Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1997)

Klug, Heinz. Constituting Democracy: Law, Globalism, and South Africa’s Political Reconstruction.   (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

 

Related readings: Davis, D. M. “Constitutional borrowing: The influence of legal culture and local history in the reconstitution of comparative influence: The South African experience” International Journal of Constitutional Law 1(2003): 181-195 (on line, check UF library e-journal holdings)

 

Week 12: Poland

Constitution of the Republic of Poland (1997)

Brzezinski, Mark. The Struggle for Constitutionalism in Poland (1998).      

 

Week 13: Afghanistan

            Afghanistan Constitution (2004)

Brown, Nathan. Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws & the Prospects for Accountable Government  (SUNY Press, 2001).

 

Related readings: Said Amir Arjomand, “The Role of Religion and the Hanafi and Ja’fari Jurisprudence in the New Constitution of Afghanistan” at http://www.cic.nyu.edu/pdf/E14RoleofReligioninConstitutionArjomand.pdf

Background material: http://www.constitution-afg.com and http://www.cic.nyu.edu/conflict/conflict_translations.html

 

Week 14: European Union?

Current draft EU Constitution

Krasner, Stephen, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton University Press, 1999).

 

Background material: http://www.unizar.es/euroconstitucion/Home.htm (contains links to relevant treaties, and related materials)

Related readings: European Constitutional Law Review 1 (February 2005)

 

 

Other readings and sources:

 

On line:

European Documents (often in original language) at http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/ec.html

 

Books and articles:

Ackerman, Bruce. “The Rise of World Constitutionalism,” Virginia Law Review (1997): 775

van Caenegem, R.C. An Historical Introduction to Western Constitutional Law. (Cambridge University Press 1995).

Dale, Elizabeth. Debating—and Creating—Authority: The Failure of a Constitutional Ideal, Massachusetts Bay, 1629-1649 (Ashgate, 2001).

Greenberg, Douglas, Stanley Katz, Melanie Beth Olivero and Stephen Wheatley, eds., Constitutionalism and Democracy. (Oxford University Press, 1993)

Hirschl, Ran. Towards Juristocracy: A Comparative Inquiry into the Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism. (Harvard University Press, 2004).

Inoue, Kyoko MacArthur's Japanese Constitution: A Linguistic and Cultural Study of its Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies. Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1957.

Kommers, Donald P. The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (Duke University Press, 1980).

Ludwikowski, Rett R. and William F. Fox, Jr., The Beginning of the Constitutional Era: A Bicentennial Comparative Analysis of the First Modern Constitutions (Catholic University of America Press, 1993).

McIlwain, Charles Howard. Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern. (Cornell University Press., 1940).

Moore, James Maxwell. The Roots of French Republicanism; The Evolution of the Republican Ideal in French-Revolutionary France and its Culmination in the Constitution of 1793. (American Press, 1962).

Ward, Lee. The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press, 2004).