4 From Comparative Constitutional Law to Comparative Constitutional Studies

Author(s):  
Hirschl Ran

The chapter argues for an interdisciplinary approach to comparative constitutional inquiry that is methodologically and substantively preferable to doctrinal accounts. It suggests that for historical, analytical, and methodological reasons, maintaining the disciplinary divide between comparative constitutional law and other closely related disciplines that study various aspects of the same constitutional phenomena, artificially and unnecessarily limits our horizons and restricts the questions asked as well as the answers provided. Traditional disciplinary boundaries, both substantive and methodological, between comparative (public) law and the social sciences continue to impede the development of comparative constitutional studies as an ambitious, coherent, and theoretically advanced area of inquiry. By engaging in a dialogue with the social sciences, and political science in particular, comparative constitutional inquiries would go beyond the traditional realms of judicial review to consider extrajudicial factors such as judicial behaviour, the origins of constitutional change, constitutional design, and the real-life effects of constitutional jurisprudence.

Author(s):  
Ngoc Son Bui

This book seeks to fill the academic gap in the existing literature on comparative constitutional law by examining how and why five current socialist countries (China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam) have changed their constitutions after the fall of the Soviet Union. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach which integrates comparative constitutional law with social sciences (particularly political science and sociology), this book explores and explains: the progressive function; institutional and socio-economic causes; legal forms, processes, and powers; and five variations (universal, integration, reservation, exceptional, and personal) of socialist constitutional change. It uses qualitative methodology, including the support of fieldwork. It contributes to a better understanding of dynamic socioeconomic, legal, and constitutional change in socialist countries and comparative constitutional law and theory, generally.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imge Oranli

In this paper, I bring together the philosophical scholarship on evil and the literature on “epistemic injustice” in order to assess effective vocabulary to understand the phenomenon of genocide denial. I use the term “denial” to denote the discursive political tactic that makes the evil of genocide invisible. Adi Ophir’s discussion of “two orders of evil” allows us to consider genocide denial as a form of evil. For what Ophir identifies as a second-order evil, another stream of scholarship suggests the term “epistemic injustice.” This latter literature can also be deployed effectively in treating the question of genocide denial, insofar as it provides an interdisciplinary approach rather than a strictly philosophical one. Epistemic injustice scholars focus on different types of unfair treatment in the realm of knowledge-production, and they agree that exclusion, silencing, invisibility and distorted representation are major forms of epistemic injustice. I argue that both scholarships are crucial to draw out conceptual frameworks for understanding the specific case of genocide denial. Furthermore, I think that interdisciplinary approaches informed by the social sciences are essential to map out the real life implications of the injustices that are implemented through denial.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Fontaine

ArgumentFor more than thirty years after World War II, the unconventional economist Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) was a fervent advocate of the integration of the social sciences. Building on common general principles from various fields, notably economics, political science, and sociology, Boulding claimed that an integrated social science in which mental images were recognized as the main determinant of human behavior would allow for a better understanding of society. Boulding's approach culminated in the social triangle, a view of society as comprised of three main social organizers – exchange, threat, and love – combined in varying proportions. According to this view, the problems of American society were caused by an unbalanced combination of these three organizers. The goal of integrated social scientific knowledge was therefore to help policy makers achieve the “right” proportions of exchange, threat, and love that would lead to social stabilization. Though he was hopeful that cross-disciplinary exchanges would overcome the shortcomings of too narrow specialization, Boulding found that rather than being the locus of a peaceful and mutually beneficial exchange, disciplinary boundaries were often the occasion of conflict and miscommunication.


Author(s):  
Arturo García Santillán ◽  
Milka Elena Escalera Chávez ◽  
Josefina Carmen Santana Villegas ◽  
Bertha Yolanda Guzmán Rivas

Abstract.Mathematical knowledge is very important in the lives of people, therefore, it is necessary understand it and make good use of mathematics in everyday life. Therefore, the aim of this work is to identify whether there is a set of latent variables that allow explain the anxiety toward math on students at Instituto Tecnológico de Tuxtepec, Oaxaca. The study is quantitative; and the study sample was formed of 303 college students from several profiles of the social sciences and engineering areas. The instrument utilized, is the scale of Munoz and Mato (2007) and was applied face to face to sample of study, in order to get data that allow us measure mathematics anxiety. The results show that students consider about the exposed variables that, the most prominent variable is the anxiety toward mathematics when faced in real life situations. The results allow us to observe that the studied variables explained 81% of variance that explains the math anxiety; the remaining 19% is explained by other variables that have not been considered in this research. Hence, if the student increases their anxiety in one of those, for example toward compression of mathematical problems, other variables also increase as the results show that there is a direct relationship between them.Keywords: Anxiety, Mathematics, Attitude toward mathematics, mathematics evaluationResumen.Los conocimientos matemáticos son de suma importancia en la vida de las personas, por lo tanto en la actualidad es necesario entender y hacer buen uso de las matemáticas en la vida diaria. El objetivo de este trabajo es identificar si en los alumnos del Instituto Tecnológico de Tuxtepec, existe un conjunto de variables que pueden explicar la ansiedad frente a las matemáticas. El estudio es cuantitativo, la muestra de estudio se conformó de 303 estudiantes del nivel universitario del Instituto Tecnológico de Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, de varios perfiles de ciencias sociales e ingeniería. Se utilizó el cuestionario Muñoz y Mato-Vázquez (2007), para medir la ansiedad a las matemáticas. Los resultados muestran que los estudiantes consideran que de las variables expuestas, la más preponderante es la ansiedad que les causa las matemáticas cuando se encuentran en situaciones de la vida real. Los resultados dejan ver que las variables analizadas contribuyen con el 81% a determinar la ansiedad hacia las matemáticas, el 19% restante es explicado por otras variables que no han sido consideradas en esta investigación. De ahí que, si el estudiante incrementa su ansiedad en una de ellas por ejemplo hacia la compresión de los problemas matemáticos, las otras variables también se incrementan ya que los resultados muestran que hay una relación directa entre ellas.Palabras clave: Ansiedad, Matemáticas, Actitud hacia las matemáticas, Evaluación matemática.


Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Morton

This chapter provides a background on ethical costs of upward mobility. It explains what ethical costs are, why they matter, and how to contend with them. The chapter outlines the elements of a new narrative of upward mobility, one that is honest about the ethical costs involved. It also emphasizes how narratives are powerful tools in shaping the understanding of people and their future. The ideas introduced are not only backed up by arguments or evidence from the social sciences, but also illustrated by the stories of real-life strivers. It does not intend to serve as a rigorous, systematic empirical study of the experiences of first-generation students. Rather, it is meant to show narratives of upward mobility that are far more ethically complicated than is generally acknowledged.


City, State ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 17-50
Author(s):  
Ran Hirschl

This chapter examines four introductory dimensions of the political and constitutional discourse around cities. The first is the tremendous interest in cities throughout much of the human sciences as contrasted with the silence of public law in general, and of comparative constitutional law in particular. Next, the chapter takes a look at the dominant statist stance embedded in constitutional law, in particular as it addresses sovereignty and spatial governance of the polity. A brief account of what national constitutions actually say about cities, and more significantly what they do not is then given. Finally, the chapter turns to the tendency in political discourse on collective identity to understand the “local” almost exclusively at the national or regional levels, rather than distinguishing urban interests from those of the state. Taken together, the four angles of city constitutional (non)status examined here highlight the bewildering silence of contemporary constitutional discourse with respect to cities and urbanization, as well as the strong statist outlook embedded in national constitutional orders, effectively rendering the metropolis a constitutionally non-tenable entity.


Author(s):  
Gabrielle Watson

Respect is a value whose importance in contemporary criminal justice many would endorse in principle. It is well established that every person, by virtue of his humanity, has a claim to respect that need not be negotiated and cannot be forfeited. Rich and ongoing debates about respect beyond criminal justice—notably, in philosophy and elsewhere in the social sciences—indicate that scholarly interest in respect surpasses disciplinary boundaries, that it is of considerable explanatory and normative scope, and that it matters. It is curious, then, that despite academic interest in the democratic design of penal institutions in recent decades, respect is more akin to a slogan than a foundational value of criminal justice practice.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
PEER ZUMBANSEN

AbstractComparative lawyers have for more than a century sought to increase the understanding of ‘foreign’ legal orders and regulatory systems. Despite some never fully resolved methodological questions, great advances have been made in the comparative study of different regulatory areas both in ‘private’ (contract, tort, corporate, labour) and ‘public’ law (administrative law, environmental law). Comparative constitutional law [CCL] has emerged as a field with particular significance. Born in the context of a politically extremely divided world after the Second World War, CCL has undergone tremendous change in an economically fast-integrating world since the late 1980s. The distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘socialist’ constitutional orders that characterized early monographical treatments of the subjects has since given way to a very incoherent landscape ofvarieties of constitutionalism, with enormous consequences for the task of comparative constitutional law. Rather than being able to set side-by-side distinct doctrinal instruments or legal principles that can be associated with a particular constitutional system, the emerging transnational legal-pluralist order demands a methodologically radically opened and methodologically interdisciplinary approach to capture the dynamics of constitutionalization, which characterize today’s processes of public-private norm creation and diffusion.


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