Redefining Comparative Constitutional Law: Essays for Mark Tushnet

Over the past two decades, the field of comparative constitutional law has emerged as a major domain of scholarly inquiry. It has also been a notable feature in judicial practice. Many of the world’s leading courts are now composed of at least some members who engage with comparative materials, and thinking comparatively has developed into one of the most significant ways of engaging in constitutional analyses.

Redefining Comparative Constitutional Law: Essays for Mark Tushnet reflects upon the field of comparative constitutional law. Among the most prominent figures in the development of the field in its ongoing renaissance has been Mark Tushnet. This book uses the occasion of Professor Tushnet’s recent retirement from Harvard Law School to think critically about the field. Each essay takes up one of Professor Tushnet’s major recent themes which focuses on variations within liberal constitutionalism and the possibility of other forms of constitutionalism that find articulation under other political regimes.

In this book, leading scholars contribute to the debate over the nature of the field, including the role of empiricism and language; discussions of democracy and entrenchment; analyses of rights and courts; consideration of constitutional design; and explorations of the extent to which there are varieties of constitutionalism.

At a moment of renewed stress and political debate over the relationship between democracy and constitutionalism, Redefining Comparative Constitutional Law: Essays for Mark Tushnet offers timely insights into comparative analyses of constitutional rights. Academics and students alike will benefit from the essays that range across both methodological questions and substantive analysis in the development of constitutions throughout the globe.

Madhav Khosla, Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, Vicki C. Jackson, Laurence H Tribe Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School

Madhav Khosla is an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia University. He is interested in the nature and form of constitutions, especially from a comparative and theoretical perspective. Khosla studied political theory at Harvard University, and law at Yale Law School and the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Before joining Columbia Law School, he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Khosla’s books include India’s Founding Moment, which was an Economist Best Book of 2020 and co-winner of the Order of the Coif Book Award 2021.

Vicki C. Jackson, Laurence H. Tribe Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, works on comparative constitutional law, U.S. constitutional law, and federal courts. Previously she was Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University. She is the author of Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era (2010), coauthor, with Mark Tushnet, of Comparative Constitutional Law (3d ed. 2014), and co-editor, with Yasmin Dawood, of Constitutionalism and a Right to Effective Government? (2022), among other works. Her scholarship concerns knowledge institutions, effective government and constitutionalism; judicial independence and the Supreme Court, free expression, federalism, pro-constitutional representation, proportionality review, equality, unconstitutional amendments, and standing.