Prof Tarun Khaitan

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law and LLB in Laws. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

This course is a study of constitutional law and politics from a comparative perspective. It has two distinctive features: first, the course goes beyond a focus on courts and legal norms. While constitutional courts will feature, they will do so as one of many constitutional actors that comprise a constitutional system. We will therefore also a study of other constitutional actors (such as legislatures, executives, political parties, the opposition, the military, and guarantor institutions such as electoral commissions, ombudsoffices, human rights and equality commissions, and anti-corruption bodies).   

Second, the course will seek to understand these non-judicial actors by adopting a comparative constitutional perspective. We will draw our examples not only from constitutionally influential jurisdictions (such as United States, United Kingdom, South Africa and Germany), but also from jurisdictions outside the ‘canon’ of comparative constitutional law, such as China, Iran, Australia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Hong Kong, Afghanistan, and the Netherlands. This diverse jurisdictional lens should help us critique the dominant court-focused approach and explore other possibilities of constitutional design.

20 hours of seminars in the WT. 2 hours of seminars in the ST.

2,000 word essay.

Adem Abebe, ‘Tackling Winner-Takes-All Politics in Africa: Inclusive Governance through Constitutional Empowerment of Opposition Parties’ in T Ginsburg et al eds, The Constitutional Design of Elections and Parties (forthcoming 2024) 

Dinesha Samararatne, ‘Sri Lanka’s Guarantor Branch’ in Swati Jhaveri et al eds, Constitutional Resilience Beyond Courts (2023) 

Tarun Khaitan, ‘Directive Principles and the Expressive Accommodation of Ideological Dissenters’ (2018) International Journal of Constitutional Law 389 

Ozan Varol, the Military as the Guardian of Constitutional Democracy, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (2013) 

Mirjam Künkler and David S Law, ‘Islamic Constitutionalism: Iran’ in David Law, Constitutionalism in Context (2022) 

Gabrielle Appleby & Eddie Synot, ‘A First Nations Voice: Institutionalising Political Listening’ (2020) Federal Law Review 529 

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.