Vidya Kumar

The field of Global Constitutionalism (also sometimes called “International Constitutionalism”) is a very odd field, one which, with very limited exceptions (Frankenberg, Schwöbel, and Volk), has been neglected by most critical international and constitutional law scholars. One reason it is an oddity is because of its disciplinary hybridity. That is to say, it is neither fish nor fowl – it is neither fully a discipline of comparative constitutionalism nor is it fully a discipline of international law.

James Fowkes

South Africa’s socio-economic rights jurisprudence has a reputation for restraint, at least when compared to the boldest jurisdictions like India or Colombia. This relative judgement is accurate. But it should not obscure recognition of how far-reaching the Court’s quieter approach can sometimes be – especially when the approach is not embodied in one big-name judgment like Grootboom and so is harder for comparative scholars to detect.

David Bilchitz

The South African constitution has been lauded for its inclusion of justiciable socio-economic rights. Yet, making claims flowing from these rights remains inaccessible to many people across the country. This blog post (based on a paper being presented at a conference in Berlin on Constitutionalism in the Global South) seeks to consider the obstacles relating to access to justice for socio-economic rights claims in South Africa and potential solutions.

Roberto Niembro

Authoritarian constitutionalism is a new category used by constitutional law scholars to refer to a distinct type of regime wherein there are faulty practices and a constitution with an authoritarian content. With these characteristics in mind it seems contradictory to talk about “constitutionalism”. In this post I introduce a different understanding of authoritarian constitutionalism.

Philipp Dann

This week, the journal Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) / Law and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America celebrates its 50th birthday with an international conference on “The Global South in Comparative Constitutional Law” in Berlin. While scholarship in comparative constitutional law is booming, this anniversary conference is an unusual event in at least two ways: It is asking particularly about the role of the Global South in comparative constitutional law, and it does so with a group of speakers that is mixed, if not dominated by voices from the Global South.

Michael Riegner

This week, Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) / Law and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America celebrates its 50th birthday with an international conference on “The Global South in Comparative Constitutional Law” in Berlin. VRÜ will accompany this conference with an online symposium also featured on the blog of the International Association of Constitutional Law.

David Landau

David Landau, Florida State University College of Law, reports on the recent IACL roundtable held in Johannesburg.

On 28-29 May 2015, a number of scholars from around the world gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa for a roundtable on the “new” separation of powers: can the doctrine evolve to meet the 21st Century context?