From Constitution to Constitutionalism: A Global Framework for Legitimate Public Power Systems

By Larry Catá Backer113 Penn St. L. Rev. 671.

Academic and policy engagements with constitutions and constitutionalism have largely been built around unstated frameworks within which legitimated activity can take place. The essay suggests both the disorientation of much of the discussion and proposes an ideological framework that captures the assumptions about which constitutionalist discourse has evolved. Constitutionalism at one time could be said to involve the study of the peculiarities of the unique domestic constitutional framework through which government was constituted and power institutionalized. No longer. This essay examines the current discourse of constitutionalism . . . [keep reading]