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Constitutional Transplantations | Israel Institute for Advanced Studies

Constitutional Transplantations

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[RG # 161] Constitutional Transplantations

November 1, 2019 – January 31, 2020

Organizer:

Anat Scolnicov (University of Winchester, UK)

This project will examine transplantation of constitutions and constitutional ideas from one country to another. Such transplantations have occurred both voluntarily (such as in Eastern Europe post-communism) and by imposition (such as in Japan after World War Two). This phenomenon raises both theoretical and practical questions. These include the role played by the existing culture and history of the country in receipt of constitutional provisions and ideas, and the extent to which external as opposed to internal constitution-making can lead to successful constitutional reform, particularly in the areas of democratisation  and human rights protection.

A basic question looms: Is the endeavour of constitutional transplantation a worthy, or even a worthwhile, one?  The replication of the constitutional text does not and cannot result in a replication of the constitution itself. The resulting constitution is a product of history, culture and religion as much as it is a product of the text.

Further questions emerge: When do constitutional transplantations succeed in producing the anticipated outcomes, and what are the conditions for that? Is it to the role of judges to affect constitutional transplantations? How can judges in their decisions justify borrowing from other constitutional systems? Do some constitutional systems provide a better template for transplantation than others? Can constitutional transplantation lead to democratisation and better protection of human rights?

Discussion of certain conceptual questions relating to this transplantation is currently missing in the literature. Such discussion has not just theoretical importance, but has important lessons for countries currently undergoing constitutional transition and reform (such as Nepal and Myanmar).

Members

Thomas Horsley

Thomas Horsley

FELLOW
University of Liverpool

Thomas Horsley is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool. He completed his PhD thesis at the University of Edinburgh (2009-2011), funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council. He was appointed Associated Head of Department in 2019.

 

Thomas specialises in EU and UK constitutional law with a particular focus on theorising the relationships between constitutions and institutions. He has published widely in leading international journals and edited collections. His first monograph, The Court of Justice of the European Union as an Institutional Actor: Judicial Lawmaking and its Limits, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2018.  It interrogates the function of the EU Treaty framework as a source of normative restraint on the Court of Justice and, more specifically, its interpretative choices as an institutional actor within the Union legal order.

 

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Thomas engages proactively with key stakeholders. In 2017, he was invited by the European People’s Party to speak at the European Parliament on the challenges of managing Brexit. He has previously given evidence to the House of Lords EU Select Committee (2015). His research also been cited in several UK Government reports. In 2014, he was appointed UK rapporteur at the XXVI FIDE Congress hosted by the University of Copenhagen. Thomas also regularly offers expert reaction to national and international media (incl. BBC News and CTV News) on major legal developments in EU and UK constitutional law. 

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Lorenzo Zucca

Lorenzo Zucca

FELLOW
King’s College London

 

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Lorenzo Zucca is Professor in Law & Philosophy. Lorenzo's special interests span from human rights law and philosophy to constitutional theory, with a focus on the relation between Church and State. 

He's now working on a project entitled 'The Uncertainty of Will,' which explores Shakespeare's vision on the connection between power and knowledge and examines its psychological and philosophical insights on human cognition and human institutions. 

He is the author of Constitutional Dilemmas- Conflicts of Fundamental Legal Rights in Europe and the USA (OUP, 2007) and numerous articles on human rights law and theory. His second monograph is entitled A Secular Europe: Law and Religion in the European Constitutional Landscape (OUP 2012). This is a study of one of the most pressing problems in Europe and includes issues such as the protection of religious freedom, the limits of religious toleration, and a wider debate on European identity.

 

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