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Course module: UCSSCLAW22
UCSSCLAW22
Comparative Constitutional Law
Course info
Course codeUCSSCLAW22
EC7.5
Course goals
After completing this course students are able to:
  • Identify essential characteristics of constitutional systems from a (European) comparative and administrative perspective.
  • Read an analyze (constitutional) judgments.
  • Argue their case with the help of legal arguments.  
  • Put (constitutional) law in its social and political context. 
Content
This course offers an introduction to the study of comparative constitutional law with aspects of comparative European constitutional law and comparative administrative law. The course focuses on the central issues of Comparative Constitutional Law, Comparative European Constitutional Law and Comparative Administrative Law across several jurisdictions – Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands, (sometimes) the United States and the institutions of the European Union. This guarantees an insight into both common law and civil law systems, federal and unitary states, parliamentary and presidential systems, the influence of European Law and the position of the judiciary.
Theme 1         Comparative Constitutional Law (week 1-5)
The first five weeks will focus mainly on classical themes of Constitutional Law such as Parliamentary v. Presidential System, Unitary v. Federal State structure, the approach of Fundamental Rights and the position of the judiciary branch v. the legislative and administrative branch.
Theme 2         Comparative European Constitutional Law (week 6-10)
After the first five weeks of the course (national constitutional systems compared), the next five weeks will deal with a comparative analysis of the relation between the EU legal system and the national constitutional legal orders. During the first part of these five weeks (theme 1 and 2) constitutional aspects of the European Union itself will be studied. The same type of questions as were dealt with during the first five weeks of the course, like the balance between legislator and judiciary, presidential vs. parliamentary systems, protection of fundamental rights, will be studied as far as the EU legal order itself is concerned. The focus during the last three weeks of this part of the course (theme 3,4 and 5) will be directed towards the interaction between the EU and the national constitutional legal orders. Questions like the acceptance of supremacy of EU law in the Member States and the role of national constitutional courts will be analyzed in a comparative way. Case law and literature will be announced in due time before the start of this part of the course.
Theme 3         Comparative Administrative Law (week 11-15)
The last five weeks will focus on topics concerning Comparative Administrative Law. This theme of five weeks will focus mainly on the position of the judiciary branch and comparative administrative case-law.

 
Format
The course consists of lectures and tutorials, during the different constitutional themes will be discussed and analysed, discussions by the students. The students are supposed to write three separate papers (one paper on each of the three themes) on topics of their choice  that is related to the course (and the three themes).
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