JSI Seminar: Expertise for the End of History: The Rise of Comparative Constitutional Law in the 1990s

Speaker: Dr Dylan Lino, University of Queensland

Since the 1990s, the fortunes of comparative constitutional law as a field of scholarly enquiry have risen stratospherically. In accounting for the field’s rapid ascent and consolidation, scholars typically identify as the main catalyst the wave of constitution-making that occurred in the early 1990s, especially throughout the former Soviet Bloc.

That analysis, while correct, leaves much unsaid about the operative forces, actors and institutions operating at ‘the end of history’ that helped to establish comparative constitutional law as a prestigious domain of academic expertise.

This paper seeks to shed light on the rise of comparative constitutional law by exploring the origins and operation of one academic institution that was both exemplary of and influential in that rise: the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe.

Drawing on the example of the Chicago Center, the paper argues that comparative constitutional law rose to prominence in substantial part because it was fostered by powerful global actors – Northern states, private foundations and international institutions – to guide and legitimate their agendas of promoting liberal democracy in the Global South and the post-Communist world. For scholars, whether in the Global North, South or East, comparative constitutional law became attractive not simply because of its intellectual interest, but due to the opportunities comparative constitutional expertise offered for exerting political influence over constitution-making and for professional advancement.

Understanding the origins of the rise of comparative constitutional law helps us in understanding the field’s shape today.

About the speaker

Dylan Lino is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland School of Law. He researches in constitutional law and colonialism, especially in their historical and theoretical contexts.

Time: 6-7.30pm AEST

This is an online event. Once you register you will receive the Zoom details.

CPD Points: 1.5

This event is hosted by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.