Günter Frankenberg, Comparative Constitutional Studies

Few fields of legal study are as introspective as comparative law. It is fairly obvious that scholars would try to analyze and elaborate the rules of contracts, succession, or administrative law. Those subjects affect people every day. It takes some thinking, on the other hand, to figure out why anyone should care about how and why German and Canadian judicial qualifications differ. In fact, a hefty chunk of comparative law scholarship concerns, well, comparative law scholarship.1 Comparative constitutional law—a relative latecomer to comparative study—contributes at least its fair share to this literature.2 For many years, Günter Frankenberg has been an important participant in debates about comparative law generally and comparative constitutional law in particular. Over almost four decades he has offered a stream of illuminating books and articles. He has made a special point of arguing that most comparative law scholars fail to take seriously the need to understand the social, economic, and political cultures in which legal artifacts are embedded. Such understanding might turn out to be beyond the ability of comparatists but, in any event, few have made a serious attempt. Instead, they have approached foreign law from the easy vantage point of their own—almost always Western—jurisprudential traditions.3

Comparative law · Constitutional law · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Comparative and International Law Studies · Conflict of Laws and Jurisdiction · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law