This book provides insights into the viability of the idea of global constitution. Global constitutionalism has emerged as an alternative paradigm for international law. However, in view of the complex and varied structure of contemporary constitutionalism, in reality it is extremely difficult to use constitutional law to provide a new paradigm for international law. The book argues that the cultural paradigm can offer functional tools for the global constitutionalism discourse. In other words, global constitutionalism could be handled in the context of a global “constitutional culture” instead of a global constitution. This would provide a more realistic basis for discussing global constitutionalization of a society as diverse as the international community, where a globalized polity and a globalized legal system have not yet been achieved.

This Handbook introduces scholars and students to the history, philosophy, and evidence of global constitutionalism. Contributors provide their insights from law, politics, international relations, philosophy, and history, drawing on diverse frameworks and empirical data sets. Across them all, however, is a recognition that the international order cannot be understood without an understanding of constitutional theory. The Handbook will define this field of inquiry for the next generation by bringing together some of the leading contemporary scholars.

Examines and compares East Asian and European perspectives of Global Constitutionalism.

Westphalian constitutionalism has shaped our understanding of politics, socio-political institutions and personal and political freedom for centuries. It is historically based in the foundations of Western modernity, such as humanism and rationalism, and is organised around familiar principles of national sovereignty, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and democracy. But since the end of the twentieth century, global constitutionalism has gradually emerged, challenging both the constitutional ideology and the constitutional design of Westphalian constitutional law. This book critically assesses the structural and functional transformations in the Westphalian constitutional tradition produced by the emergence of supranational and global constitutionalism. In so doing, it evaluates the theory of global constitutionalism, its legal and socio-political limits, and important issues concerning the supranational constitutionalism of the EU. This leads to an articulation of the constitutional theory of the emerging post-Westphalian constitutionalism, examining its development during a period of significantly increased access to and sharing of information, increased mobility and more open statehood, as well as the rise of human rights and its encounter with populism and nationalism. This book will be of great interest to scholars of constitutional law and theory, particularly those with an interest in globalisation and supranationalism.

The world in which we find ourselves today is no longer governable entirely by resort to the classical system of international law. Even more seriously, it would seem that the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter are no longer being served sufficiently in light of new concerns. The text adopted in 1945 does not convey the image of a world tormented by terrorists. Nor does it reflect the most pressing commitments of our time: to democratic governance, to environmental responsibility, and to a freer and more equitable system of world trade. Increasingly, the international law community acknowledges the need to set new priorities in the development of international law. To that end it seems timely to reconsider the case for strengthening the constitutional framework of norms and institutions that seemed to offer the promise of fulfillment in the second half of the 20th century. The post-Cold War euphoria of the 1990s has virtually evaporated under the stress of new concerns at a time when states comprising the UN system are no longer capable of addressing these challenges. Towards World Constitutionalism argues the case for a more ‘constitutionalized’ system of international law and diplomacy. It is published at a time that the call for reform of the United Nations has become more insistent than at any time in its 60-year history. Even those most faithful to the purposes and principles enunciated in the Charter have had to admit to concerns about the management of certain sectors of the organization; and most concede the unrepresentative character of the powerful Security Council granted legal supremacy as the enforcer of international peace and security. Many go further and complain of unconscionable political bias in the General Assembly and in certain, over politicized, agencies. This collection of essays, by a selection of distinguished scholars representing various traditions of international law, constitutes a major contribution to this debate. It is an important resource for scholars and practitioners, and for all those concerned with the future of international law, and the world community.

This work investigates the problem of how constitutionality and the internationally increasingly accepted global principles of human rights can influence state action, which is still considered sovereign. International human rights regulations are of pre-eminence in this context since they are virtually, by definition, based on limitations of national constitutional law, in order to assert internationally shared constitutional principles. The evolution of international human rights - triggered by the Holocaust trauma - was the first serious challenge pertaining to any kind of domestic action within the sovereignty of states. This new type of global morality that manifests itself in international relations largely owes itself to the emergence of the notion that certain states bear responsibility for the horrors of World War II. The first part will review the resultant limitation of sovereignty in the context of the creation, amendment, and interpretation of national constitutions, seeking to answer the questions of how far the process of internationalization of (national0 constitutional law has progressed. The second part will address the constitutionalization of the small segment of international law that manifest itself in the assertion of international human rights standards in the case law of national courts.