The Migration of Constitutional Ideas

October 15-16, 2004

University of Toronto Faculty of Law

Comparative constitutional law is rapidly emerging as a major field within legal scholarship.  However, the existing literature suffers from serious shortcomings.  Although methodologically diverse, it is rarely comparative, consisting largely of studies of single jurisdictions.  More fundamentally, the existing literature shares a common approach to the study of comparative constitutional law – the static comparison of different constitutional systems.  Remarkably, what has not been addressed in any depth is the movement or migration of constitutional ideas across jurisdictions, which is rapidly emerging as one of the central features of contemporary constitutional practice, both at the stage of constitutional framings and of constitutional interpretation.  This is true not only at the national level, but also at the supranational level, as evinced by the process surrounding the drafting of the EU Draft Constitutional Treaty.  Although constitutional migration has been characterized to a limited extent at a descriptive level, little academic attention has been given to a variety of conceptual issues, such as the methodology of constitutional comparison and migration, and the normative underpinnings of such an enterprise.  This conference aims to redress this gap.

Registration

To register for the conference, download the conference registration form, fill it out, and mail or fax it to the address provided.

Registration Fee

  • University of Toronto Academic Faculty: waived
  • Full Time Student: $20
  • Academic Faculty: $75
  • General: $150

Schedule

Friday October 15

800 to 900: Registration and Breakfast              

900 to 915: Welcoming Remarks

  • Sujit Choudhry, University of Toronto              

930 to 1200: The Methodology of Comparativism

Chair: Richard Simeon, University of Toronto

  • Jean-François Gaudreault-Desbiens, University of Toronto
    “Rimbaud’s Constitutionalism? Principles as Sources of Rapprochement and Métissage”
  • Ran Hirschl, University of Toronto
    “Eclectica: On the Blurred Methodological Matrix of Comparative Constitutional Law”
  • Annelise Riles, Cornell University
    “Trashing the Technocracy: Judicial Reasoning and Political Debate in Contemporary American Constitutional Law.”
  • Mark Tushnet, Georgetown University
    “The Methodologies of Comparative Constitutional Law”

1200 to 1300: Lunch                                            

1300 to 1530: Convergence Toward a Liberal Democratic Model?     

Chair: Alan Brudner, University of Toronto                              

  • Jeff Goldsworthy, Monash University
    “Against Constitutional Convergence”
  • Michel Rosenfeld, Yeshiva University & Andras Sajo, Central European University
    “Illiberal Constitutionalism: The Myth of Liberal Constitutionalism in Transition Democracies”
  • Lorraine Weinrib, University of Toronto
    "The Globalization of Constitutional Analysis: The Post-Second World War Constitutional Model"
  • Brenda Cossman, University of Toronto 
    "Transnational Flows of Same Sex Marriage"

Saturday, October 16

830 to 930: Breakfast   

930 to 1200: Comparative Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance      

Chair:  Ron Daniels, University of Toronto            

  • Karen Knop & Mayo Moran, University of Toronto
    “Influential Authority and International Values”
  • Mattias Kumm, New York University School of Law
    “When Democratic Constitutionalism Encounters Transnational Governance: The Transformation of Constitutionalism in Europe”
  • David Schneiderman, University of Toronto
    “Constitution or Model Treaty? Struggling over the Interpretive Authority of NAFTA”
  • Neil Walker, European University Institute
    “The Janus-faced EU: Constitutionalism Migration and Transnational Governance”

1200 to 1300: Lunch

1300 to 1530: Comparative Constitutional Law in Action: Constitutionalism Post 9/11   

Chair: Karen Knop, University of Toronto   

  • Oren Gross, University of Minnesota
    "Martial Law, State of Siege and the Fight Against Terrorism: Discretion, Regulation, and Emergency Powers Across the English Channel"
  • Ed Morgan, University of Toronto
    “Six Treaties In Search of a Sovereign: The Migrations of Anti-Terrorism Law”
  • Kent Roach, University of Toronto
    “Comparative Anti-Terrorism Law and the Migration of Constitutional Ideas”
  • Kim Lane Scheppele, University of Pennsylvania
    “The International State of Emergency: The Role of the UN Security Council in Comparative Terrorism Responses After 9/11”

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Abstracts

Panel 1: The Methodology of Comparativism

The globalization of the practice of modern constitutionalism has had a dramatic impact on the legal academy, by reinvigorating the study of comparative constitutional law.  However, despite a burgeoning literature, students of comparative constitutional law have largely failed to address questions of methodology – that is, to ask the questions of what the point of comparative inquiry is, and how that enterprise is to be undertaken.  An important theme of the volume will be to address these basic issues.

Ran Hirschl, “Eclectica: On the Blurred Methodological Matrix of Comparative Constitutional Law”

Although intellectual interest in comparative constitutionalism has been growing steadily over the past two decades, the field of comparative constitutional law (and comparative law more generally) remains under-theorized and lacks a coherent methodology. Genuinely comparative, problem driven scholarship (as opposed to single country studies mistakenly characterized as comparative only by the virtue of dealing with any country other than the United States) is difficult to come by. Fundamental methodology questions concerning the rationale of comparative inquiry, and how that enterprise is to be undertaken, remain largely outside the purview of canonical constitutional law scholarship. The paper will address this lacuna by contrasting the approaches of legal academics and political scientists to the same sets of comparative constitutional phenomena. Special attention will be given to: (a) the added value of comparative inquiry, such as mapping and taxonomy, self-reflection through analogy and contrast, interpretive analysis, inductive reasoning, and causal inference through quasi-scientific research; (b) the methodological foundations of what social scientists call “the comparative method”; (c) formal versus contextual comparison; and (d) other pertinent problems of research design and case selection. Examples will be drawn from comparative constitutional law scholarship by prominent legal academics such as Bruce Ackerman, Martha Nussbaum, Kim Scheppele, Cass Sunstein, Mark Tushnet, and Joseph Weiler, as well as from social science accounts of comparative constitutional politics such as Charles Epp’s The Rights Revolution (Chicago, 1998), Alec Stone Sweet’s Governing with Judges (Oxford, 2000), Leslie Goldstein’s Constituting Federal Sovereignty (Johns Hopkins, 2001), Tom Ginsburg’s Judicial Review in New Democracies (Cambridge, 2003), and Ran Hirschl’s Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard, 2004).

Mark Tushnet, “The Methodologies of Comparative Constitutional Law”

The usual methods of comparative law, imported into the study of comparative constitutional law, are universalism or functionalism, and contextualism. The universalist or functionalist approach assumes that there are general functions of government or universal norms of human rights, and examines how those functions are performed and how those norms are instantiated (or violated) in individual constitutional systems. The contextualist approach assumes that institutions and norms are deeply embedded in the particular historical, social, and cultural contexts of particular constitutional systems. Comparison consists of demonstrating how seemingly similar institutions perform different functions because of the society in which they are embedded, and how the norms applied in different constitutional systems “fit” with the cultural and other presuppositions of those systems. Each approach has its benefits and limitations, as specific examples – affirmative action and federalism – to be discussed in the paper will illustrate. In the end, though, it may be that the real value of comparative study is that, in Levi-Strauss’s words, it provides ideas to think with.

Jean-François Gaudreault-Desbiens, “Rimbaud’s Constitutionalism? Principles as Sources of Rapprochement and Métissage”

This paper will examine whether unwritten constitutional principles can facilitate the migration of constitutional ideas between jurisdictions and between legal traditions. The focus will be on the dialogue between the civil law and common law traditions. In spite of the differences that persist between these two traditions, constitutional principles may be approached in a dialogical fashion: first, because of the “trans-systemic” nature of normative principles; and, second, because principles raise fundamental questions pertaining to the role that judges should play in a democratic regime, and the freedom they should enjoy in interpreting the law. Two theses will be examined. The weak thesis is that constitutional principles have the capacity to contribute to the eventual achievement of a higher degree of harmonization between the diverse forms of constitutionalism that exist in democratic countries, since they first and foremost relate to the concept of “constitutional state” as it exists in both civil and common law jurisdictions. The bolder thesis is that constitutional principles not only play a major role in the present dynamic of the migration of constitutional ideas, but that they stand at the forefront of the elaboration of a new global, hybrid (Métis) constitutional tradition. Principles first and foremost speak to the fundamental aspirations of legal systems, and for that reason migrate across systems more easily than formal sources of legal argument (e.g. text, precedent). Finally, the successful migration of a legal idea may evince an “internal” migration on the part of jurists themselves. The use of constitutional principles allows jurists to envisage their own legal worldview (épistemè) as a cultural construct open to reconsideration, one that reveals that épistemè’s intrinsic otherness.

Panel 2: Convergence Toward a Liberal Democratic Model? 

It has been argued that migration of constitutional ideas through judicial borrowings has facilitated the emergence of a common liberal democratic model for constitutions in a variety of jurisdictions.  The volume will explore the following questions: What are the features of this model?  Do jurisdictions that subscribe to this model do so in all of its respects, or do points of divergence remain?  Is the model comprehensive in scope, or is it limited in the issues it speaks to?  What jurisdictions have been involved in the creation of this model?  Is the emergence of a common model normatively desirable?

Lorraine Weinrib, "The Globalization of Constitutional Analysis: The Post-Second World War Constitutional Model"

This paper is part of a larger project on the post-Second World War constitutional state. The demise of the rule of law, democratic institutions and respect for both the human person and identity groups, in the lead up to and during the Second World War, ushered in the “Age of Rights” at both the international and national levels. Part of the Age of Rights has been the development of what I term the “Post-Second World War Constitutional Model”, which has been adhered to by old, renovated, and new constitutions alike. Under the model, respect for inherent human dignity is a cornerstone of liberal democratic governance. The roles of courts, legislatures and the executive have been re-configured to secure protection for fundamental rights and freedoms – crystallizations of human dignity – as higher or supreme law norms. Another key feature of the new constitutional model is the stipulation of restrictions that circumscribe the permissible limitations on constitutionally entrenched rights. While each state maintains its own particularities in structure and operation, the rights-limits template of the post-Second World War constitutional model has precipitated a convergence of legal analysis across both common law and civil law jurisdictions, as well as between domestic and international human rights law. As well, the model invites a deep and sustained engagement with comparative jurisprudence. This paper explores some of the features of this constitutional convergence by tracing its historical roots, by examining some developed examples, and by noting some of the controversy that it has enerated.

Michel Rosenfeld & Andras Sajo, “Illiberal Constitutionalism: The Myth of Liberal Constitutionalism in Transition Democracies”

Constitutions entrenching bills of rights enforced through judicial review were adopted by many of the former authoritarian regimes of Eastern Europe as part of the transition to democracy. The initial judgments of the constitutional courts of Eastern Europe were heralded by Eastern European scholars, as well as scholars from Western Europe and North America, as an unqualified victory for liberal constitutional values. Moreover, since this jurisprudence was depicted as converging toward a common liberal constitutional model, it was eagerly offered up as evidence of the “end of history”. However, there is good reason to question this optimistic analysis. First, initial assessments of the constitutional jurisprudence of transition democracies were facilitated by the lack of any specific set of indicators of constitutional liberalism. Second, the acceptance by academic commentators of a margin of appreciation (or respect for local circumstances) made any falsification of the liberal claim nearly impossible. Third, independent observers were methodologically careless, often relying on second hand materials and little actual (textual and contextual) analysis of the details of the allegedly liberal constitutional decisions. A more nuanced reading of the constitutional jurisprudence of transition democracies reveals that constitutional courts invoked the rhetoric of liberalism to disguise a deep-seated illiberal constitutionalism. The supposed trend toward liberal constitutionalism in the transition democracies of Eastern Europe is a myth.

Jeff Goldsworthy, “Against Constitutional Convergence”

Whether courts should employ constitutional interpretation to facilitate convergence towards a common liberal democratic model depends on the answer to two questions. The first question is whether such a convergence is desirable. I will argue that it is too early to announce the "end of history", and presume that we have settled on some ideal constitutional arrangement. For example, tensions between democracy and judicial review have not yet been conclusively resolved. Also, differences in the social and cultural circumstances of the societies in question must be taken into account. There is still value in diversity and experimentation, and different arrangements may continue to suit different cultures and legal traditions. The second question is whether convergence should be brought about by courts through constitutional interpretation. I will argue that the extent to which a court is entitled, legally and morally, to change its national constitution through interpretation is limited. Its primary duty is to interpret the constitution as it stands, and to leave amendment to the prescribed amendment process. Of course, a court necessarily exercises law-making discretion when the constitution is indeterminate, but there is a difference between supplementing a constitution when it is ambiguous, vague, or internally inconsistent, and changing the meaning of provisions that are determinate or adding spurious "implications" that are tantamount to amendments. In making this argument, I will oppose "pragmatism" in constitutional interpretation up to a point. In general, substantive judicial amendment in the guise of interpretation violates the courts’ legal and moral obligation of fidelity to the constitution. But in exceptional circumstances, a court might be morally permitted to violate its legal obligation of fidelity to the constitution. I will refer to the High Court of Australia's recent experimentation with "implied rights", which can be regarded as an attempt to nudge that country’s constitution towards a cosmopolitan model of liberal constitutionalism. I will also discuss the Canadian Supreme Court's invocation of "unwritten constitutional principles" to enhance the protection of judicial independence (or salaries), which is a particularly blatant and outrageous example of dishonest judicial invention. Finally, I will discuss some decisions of the Indian Supreme Court, which may have been morally justifiable despite amounting to rather blatant constitutional amendments.

Brenda Cossman, The Transnational Flows of Same Sex Marriage

This paper will examine the comparative dimensions of same sex marriage through the lens of Arjun Appadurai's work on the transnational flow of people, ideas and images.  Same sex marriage has become a site of intense political, legal and discursive contestation in both the United States and Canada.   For liberals, Canadian same sex marriage jurisprudences travels as a high water mark in the progressive deployment of liberal rights discourse - it is held out as an ideal towards convergence. For social conservatives, Canadian same sex marriage jurisprudence travels as a warning of the descent into judicial activism and moral chaos - it is the siren call against convergence.  Yet, the transnational flow of constitutional ideas is but one of dimensions of the cultural flows of same sex marriage.  My paper will argue that to understand the migration of constitutional ideas around same sex marriage, it may be important to foreground, in Appadurai's language,  the ethnoscapes and ideoscapes of same sex marriage, that is, the transnational flow of people and ideas.  First, actual marriages are migrating.  In the early days after the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Halpern, a significant number of the same sex couples getting married were Americans. They traveled to Toronto, married, and then attempted to return home with their marital status.  Second, the cultural representations of same sex marriage are migrating.  Gay and lesbian cultural representations, from the television shows Queer as Folk and the L-Word, to magazines like The Advocate to movies like Kissing Jessica Stein and A Touch of Pink, travel beyond their national borders, and shape the cultural landscape of same sex marriage. My paper will consider this transnational flow of people, images and ideas around same sex marriage.

Panel 3: Comparative Constitutional Law, International Law and Transnational Governance

The diffusion of constitutional forms and institutions across national jurisdictions has occurred alongside with the proliferation of instruments of transnational governance.  Although the two phenomena have frequently been studied separately, they are in fact closely related.  Within Europe, for example, the first phase of the constitutionalization of the European Union occurred by drawing on the legal doctrines and institutions of member states.  The current phase of constitutionalization, marked by the Constitutional Convention and the Draft Constitutional Treaty, has involved drawing upon external experiences in both the processes of constitution-making and constitutional drafting.  One cannot fully understand the migration of constitutional ideas, therefore, without examining its impact on the evolution of transnational governance.  This practice raises the question of whether the reliance on domestic sources of constitutionalism has altered the character of debates over transnational governance.  Moreover, it also raises the question of the extent to which the barrier between comparative and international legal sources is breaking down.

Neil Walker, “The Janus-faced EU: Constitutionalism Migration and Transnational Governance”

This paper considers the dynamics of migration of constitutional ideas in the context of the gradually "constitutionalizing" EU. Unlike national systems, the EU is affected by the migration of constitutional ideas from two different directions: from external constitutional systems, and internally from a number of the EU’s constituent “sovereign” states. The paper examines trends in the relative influence and inter-relationship of these two sources of constitutional ideas. In the period of “implicit Constitutionalism” which characterized much of the early phase of the EU, most of the migration of constitutional ideas was internally generated and channeled, with various areas of the developing constitution of the EU drawing from national doctrines and institutions. But the dawning age of “explicit Constitutionalism”, marked by the Constitutional Convention and the Draft Constitutional Treaty, has involved the self-conscious positioning of the EU as a constitutional polity which may draw upon external experiences in both the processes of constitution-making and constitutional drafting. Paradoxically, an exercise to raise the constitutional self-consciousness of the EU has shifted the EU away from constitutional introspection to a more outward-looking approach. Although this shift allows the EU greater exposure to the ideas and techniques contained in the global constitutional tradition, there are also two dangers. First, there may be insufficient awareness that this global tradition is essentially a state tradition, and that constitutional ideas honed in the state context may not be appropriate to the transnational constitutional context. This was far less of a danger with internal constitutional migration, because there was a greater common awareness of the inappropriateness of wholesale borrowing from national constitutional traditions to an EU context which was at most only proto-constitutional, and because national rivalries and jealousies limited the extent to which any particular tradition was favoured as a source of constitutional ideas. Secondly, just as there are well-known concerns about the democratic legitimacy of states which are too receptive to the influence of outside constitutional models forged in other contexts, so are there similar concerns in the EU. Given the notoriously weak democratic credentials of the EU, resort to external constitutional influence is arguably even more illegitimate than it is within states.

Matthias Kumm, “When Democratic Constitutionalism Encounters Transnational Governance: The Transformation of Constitutionalism in Europe”

There two ways in which contemporary forms of transnational governance pose a challenge to conventional understandings of liberal democratic constitutionalism. First, there is the increasing tendency to use the language of constitutionalism to describe and assess such institutional practices. The challenge is whether and how democratic constitutionalism – developed to constrain and guide the exercise of public authority within the boundaries of the state – can be appropriately translated to helpfully describe and assess institutional practice on the transnational level. Second, democratic constitutionalism as it is understood within states is increasingly thought to be undermined by transnational institutional practices. The challenge is whether and how principles of domestic constitutional law can be adapted to allow for the constructive engagement with transnational institutional practices. Both challenges are connected. This paper explores, first, the changes of the legal and political world that have caused these challenges and explains why they take the form they do. Second, it will argue that the liberal democratic constitutional tradition – once rid of untenable moral, conceptual and institutional premises genealogically connected to the idea of state sovereignty – provides the basic conceptual and normative resources to play a constructive role in describing, criticizing and guiding political and legal practice in a multi-level governance world.

David Schneiderman, “Constitution or Model Treaty? Struggling over the Interpretive Authority of NAFTA”

At its inception, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was heralded as a 'new constitution' for North America. Its successor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, expanded and deepened these trade and investment commitments, entitling investors to sue party states in order to enforce NAFTA's strictures. These investment protections replicate and expand upon a number of dominant features found in national constitutional systems. Those writing in the tradition of political economy have identified linkages between domestic constitutions and these new transnational constraints, hypothesizing about the implications of the 'new constitutionalism' for North America. The stretching of constitutional analysis to the regional/transnational sphere has been resisted by others, often writing for an audience of international economic lawyers. These authors maintain that NAFTA goes no further than to institutionalize a limited set of constraints - - principles recognized in international law and traceable back at least to the eighteenth century Jay Treaty. These strictures, they argue, rather than being modeled upon constitutional law are better understood as modeled upon private commercial arbitrations.

This paper reviews the parameters of this debate around the scope and impact of NAFTA's investment chapter and asks whether applying the constitutional analogy is a helpful way of understanding developments in the region. It will be argued that analogizing NAFTA to constitutionalism helpfully brings out features of this regime that are intended to structure and limit political action precisely along the lines traditionally directed by national constitutional regimes. In so far as international economic lawyers resist this analogy, paradoxically, they understate the capacity of NAFTA to discipline and to shift societal values further in the direction of economic liberalism.

 

Karen Knop & Mayo Moran, “Influential Authority and International Values”

The concept of influential authority provides a more nuanced way of understanding how international law values (among other mandatory values) can exert a powerful effect on domestic adjudication, even when it is not straightforwardly binding. This paper will further explore the variety of ways in which international law exerts mandatory influence on domestic law in dualist systems that is, in states where judges traditionally insist that international treaty obligations are not binding until they are incorporated into the domestic system through legislation. It is helpful, we will argue, to undertake a more conceptual examination of the way that values drawn from international law actually figure in domestic adjudication. Such an examination reveals that the effect of international law values cannot be properly captured by reference to the well-recognized role of such values in construction. Instead, influential international law values generate a much more complex set of effects. Indeed, in their most dramatic form, influential international law values may actually give rise to a kind of estoppel-like effect in domestic courts. Thus, for instance, we see courts invoking international law values to hold that domestic courts are effectively “estopped” from enforcing racist contracts or racist trusts. In order to further develop this schema of influential authority, the paper will draw examples from a number of areas and jurisdictions including invocations of public policy in private law adjudication, notably in private international law cases involving a choice of law or the recognition of foreign judgments, and the treatment of ratified but unincorporated treaties.

Panel 4: Comparative Constitutional Law in Action - Constitutionalism Post 9/11

The challenge of reconciling the competing interests of liberty, equality and security in the wake of September 11 will be used as a case-study to explore the migration of constitutional ideas.  For example, inter-jurisdictional borrowing has been a central feature in the drafting of security legislation in response to September 11.  Moreover, case-law on the interpretation of these statutes has increasingly taken on a comparative character.  In addition, September 11 has placed on the agenda in many jurisdictions the question of the appropriate limits of core liberal rights, such as freedom of expression, freedom of religion and the right to equality.  Finally, the comparative constitutional enterprise has involved a broader range of countries – including many in Asia – than has typically been the case, making constitutionalism post 9/11 of particular interest.

Kim Lane Scheppele, “The International State of Emergency: The Role of the UN Security Council in Comparative Terrorism Responses After 9/11”

In constitutional law, states of emergency are customarily conceived as domestic crises that are handled within the constitutional boundaries of a particular country. But what happens when the requirements of international law come into tension with a domestic constitutional order in ways that encourage a state to invoke its own emergency provisions? This paper explores the consequences of UN Security Council Resolution #1373, enacted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter almost immediately after 9/11. Resolution #1373 requires all UN member states to fight terrorism in a variety of specific ways. But the resolution did not define terrorism nor did it require that steps taken to fight terrorism meet human rights standards. The urgent tone of the resolution can be read as creating the basis for an international state of emergency and in fact, many states passed rights-threatening and separation-of-powers-altering laws after 9/11 in response to Resolution #1373. In this paper, I focus in particular on post-9/11 laws in Britain, the United States and Germany, and I explore an alternative theory for the apparent migration of constitutional ideas from one constitutional order to another. Instead of positing that constitutional similarities result from one country borrowing directly from another, we might find instead that international pressures create common constitutional reactions. But, as I will show in my analysis of the German post-9/11 laws in particular, some countries reveal specific domestic constitutional resources available to moderate these international influences. One of the legacies of 9/11 may be the rise of the practical existence of an international state of emergency that breaks through the otherwise nationally bounded quality of emergency regulation. But another of its legacies reveals which constitutional orders are strong enough to resist international pressures to use emergency powers.

Ed Morgan, “Six Treaties In Search of a Sovereign: The Migrations of Anti-Terrorism Law”

The object of this paper is to trace the movement of anti-terrorism laws from their origins in public international law, through extradition law, immigration law and, ultimately, domestic criminal law. Since these arenas follow each other in sequence, with each new field of legal initiative borrowing from the last, the study seeks to discern the ways in which the logic of the law descends from the space between sovereigns to the heart of sovereign state powers. The problem is that the starting point – international law’s treatment of terrorism – is widely acknowledged as making no sense. The international rules governing terrorism seem to be a highly politicized, colliding set of random statements, doomed to repetition and arbitrary enforcement at the hands of international institutions or in one or another multilateral forum. The task of domestic law is to impose order on the chaos, producing a rational, workable legal order within which state authorities can operate. The imposition of order, however, is inevitably as unprincipled and arbitrary as anything in the comparable international law, making a truly rational set of laws impossible to achieve. This paper uses as a theoretical mirror Luigi Pirandello’s play, “Six Characters in Search of an Author”, a dramatic piece generally considered to mark the high point of the theatre of the absurd, as a medium for reflection on international law and its domestic progeny. The play is about what seems to be a highly emotional, colliding set of characters, doomed to repeat themselves and to arbitrarily replay scenes at the whim of their audiences. The task of the author is to impose order on the chaos, producing a coherent, workable drama within which the theatre can operate. At the same time, the imposition of order is inevitably a process which stifles rather than enhances creativity, making a truly artistic expression impossible to achieve. The ultimate migration of ideas traced in the paper, therefore, is from dramatic art to legal science. Just as Pirandello’s task has been described as seeking to achieve “a reckoning of accounts between theater and truth, appearance and reality”, so this paper seeks to settle the score between the two realms. The incoherence of the domestic legal order circles back to the incoherence of its international counterpart, just as the death of authorial creativity at the end of the play circles back to the absent author at its beginning. International institutions may be a theatre for the making of the law, but they are inevitably a theatre of the absurd.

Kent Roach, “Comparative Anti-Terrorism Law and the Migration of Constitutional Ideas”

The comparative study of anti-terrorism law is a fertile and important part of the larger field of comparative constitutional law. The global nature of terrorism, as well as the role of international law and institutions, has resulted in much borrowing and migration of ideas in this field. Moreover, broad definitions of terrorism mean that anti-terrorism laws have themselves emerged as “super laws” taking on a special constitution-like status with respect to other laws and on relations between the individual, the state and the courts. After discussing the nature of comparative anti-terrorism law as a field of study, I will examine the world-wide expansion of anti-terrorism laws since the attacks of 9/11, with a focus on the migration of constitutional ideas. I will focus on the impact of two instruments, one domestic and one international. The United Kingdom’s Terrorism Act, 2000 constituted the state of the art in anti-terrorism law at the moment of the 9/11 terrorist acts. I will examine its important influence in Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong. The second instrument was Resolution #1373 of the United Nation’s Security Council, which called on nations to ensure that both terrorism and the financing of terrorism were treated as serious crimes. Finally, with reference to the defeat of Hong Kong’s security bill, Indonesia’s development of its anti-terrorism law and Canada’s amendments to its anti-terrorism bill, I will discuss indigenous resistance to the migration of constitutional ideas in the anti-terrorism field.

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Speaker and Panel Chair Biographies

Alan Brudner is a professor in both the Faculty of Law and in the Department of Political Science. He holds a law degree from the University of Toronto, where he also received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in Political Science.  While studying for his law degee, he served as editor-in-chief of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review, and after graduation he taught for one year in the Department of Law at Carleton University before moving to the University of Toronto in 1984. In 1985, he was cross-appointed to the Department of Political Science. Professor Brudner teaches Criminal Law, Constitutional Theory, and Hegel's Political Philosophy, and has a special interest in legal philosophy as a method for understanding legal doctrine. He is a former book review editor of the University of Toronto Law Journal, has served as a consultant to the Canadian and Ontario Law Reform Commissions, and has been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is author of The Unity of the Common Law: Studies in Hegelian Jurisprudence, as well as numerous journal articles on a variety of topics in legal and political theory. He is currently the editor of the University of Toronto Law Journal.

Sujit Choudhry is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, and a Senior Fellow of Massey College, both at the University of Toronto. He holds law degrees from the University of Oxford, the University of Toronto, and the Harvard Law School. Professor Choudhry was a Rhodes Scholar, and held the William E. Taylor Memorial Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship from Harvard. Prior to joining the Faculty of Law, he served as law clerk to Chief Justice Antonio Lamer of the Supreme Court of Canada. During the 1998-99 academic year, he was a Graduate Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Professions, and a Visiting Researcher at the Harvard Law School. Professor Choudhry’s principal research and teaching interests are Constitutional Law and Theory, and Health Law and Policy, although he has also written on the law's response to ethnocultural difference. His articles have appeared in a variety of journals, including the International Journal of Constitutional Law, the Journal of Political Philosophy, the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, the Indiana Law Journal, the George Mason Law Review, the University of Toronto Law Journal, the McGill Law Journal, Constitutional Forum, the Supreme Court Law Review, and the Osgoode Hall Law Journal. His work has appeared in The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the US and the EU (Oxford, 2001), Anti-Discrimination Law: International Library of essays in Law and Legal Theory, 2nd Series (Ashgate, 2004) and Law and Morality: Readings in Legal Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 2001), and Canadian Constitutional Law (Emond Montgomery, 3rd ed., 2002). Professor Choudhry is currently working on a book, tentatively entitled Searching for Legitimacy through Legalism: The Constitutional Politics of Quebec Secession. He is also co-editing a volume, Redistribution in the Canadian Federation.

Brenda Cossman joined the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 1999, and became a full professor in 2000. She holds degrees in law from Harvard and the University of Toronto, and an undergraduate degree from Queen’s. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, she was Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. During this time, she also served as Director of the Institute of Feminist Legal Studies at Osgoode Hall Law School. Prof. Cossman’s teaching and scholarly interests include family law, freedom of expression, feminist legal theory, law and sexuality, and law and development. Her publications include the co-authored Bad Attitudes on Trial: Pornography, Feminism and the Butler Decision; Subversive Sites: Feminist Engagements with Law in India, and Secularism's Last Sigh? as well as numerous articles in these areas. She is co-editor (with Judy Fudge) of the forthcoming Privatization, Law and the Challenge to Feminism.

Ronald Daniels was first appointed dean of the Faculty of Law in 1995. In 2001, he was re-elected to a second six-year term. He is a professor of law at the Faculty, where he has also served as director of various programs, including the LL.B/M.B.A. program, the International Business and Trade Law Program of the Ontario Centre for Business, and the Public Interest Advocacy Program. He holds bachelor’s and law degrees from Toronto, where he was an editor-in-chief of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review in his final year, and a master’s degree in law from Yale. In 1993 and 2000, he was a John M. Olin Fellow at Cornell Law School. Professor Daniels has served as Director of the University of Toronto Electric Power Project, Chairman of the Ontario Task Force on Securities Regulation, Chair of the Market Design Committee (the committee charged with restructuring the Ontario electricity industry), and a member of the Toronto Stock Exchange Committee on Corporate Governance (the "Dey Committee").  Professor Daniels’ research and teaching interests encompass corporate law, law and economics, the profession, and privatization of government services. He has contributed to and edited numerous volumes on these subjects, including Corporate Decision-Making in Canada (1995) and Ontario Hydro at the Millennium (1995), in addition to many articles in law reviews and other journals.

Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens has been an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto since 2002. Admitted to the Québec Bar in 1988, he practiced commercial law in Québec before becoming an academic. He specializes in constitutional law (domestic and comparative), legal theory, corporate law, and law and culture. At the crossroad of constitutional law and legal theory, his most recent work has focused on the law’s apprehension of identity-related phenomena. He has published two books, Le sexe et le droit : Sur le féminisme juridique de Catharine MacKinnon and La liberté d'expression entre l'art et le droit, as well as numerous articles in both French and English.

Jeffrey Goldsworthy is a Professor of Law at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Sovereignty of Parliament: History and Philosophy (Oxford, 1999), co-editor of Protecting Human Rights, Instruments and Institutions (Oxford, 2003) and two other edited collections, and author of many journal articles and book chapters in the areas of constitutional law, constitutional theory, and legal philosophy. He is currently co-ordinating a collaborative project comparing constitutional interpretation in six different federal systems, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2005.

Oren Gross is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Legal Studies at the University of Minnesota. He holds an LL.B. degree (magna cum laude) from Tel Aviv University, and LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees from Harvard Law School. Professor Gross' main areas of research and teaching are international law, national security law, international trade law, and international business transactions. He is also an expert on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

Professor Gross joined the University of Minnesota Law School in 2002 and was appointed the Vance K. Opperman Research Scholar in 2003. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, Professor Gross was a member of the faculty of the Tel Aviv University Law School (Israel). He also taught and held visiting positions at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Princeton University, Queen's University in Belfast (Northern Ireland), the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg (Germany), and Brandeis University. Professor Gross has received numerous academic awards and scholarships including Fulbright scholarship and British Academy and British Council awards. Between 1986 and 1991, he served as a senior legal advisory officer in the international law branch of the Israeli Defense Forces' Judge Advocate General's Corps. In 1998, he served as the legal adviser to an Israeli delegation that negotiated an unofficial agreement with the Palestinian Authority's senior officials concerning the economic component of a permanent status agreement between Israel and Palestine.Prior to joining academia, Professor Gross practiced law with the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell in New York, and is a member of the Israeli and New York bars.

Ran Hirschl is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, cross-appointed to the Faculty of Law. He studied law and political science at Tel-Aviv University and at Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1999. His research and teaching interests include comparative public law, constitutional and judicial politics. While at Yale and the University of Toronto he received several prestigious fellowships and awards, including a Fulbright Scholar nomination, Visiting Fellowship at Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Affairs, a Connaught Research Fellowship in the Social Sciences, and a top-ranked nationwide Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Grant. He has published extensively on comparative constitutional law and politics in journals such as Comparative Politics, Law & Social Inquiry, Human Rights Quarterly, the American Journal of Comparative Law, Israel Studies, the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, the University of Richmond Law Review, the American Journal of Legal History, Law and Politics Book Review, the Stanford Journal of International Law, the Texas Law Review, the International Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming), and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, as well as in several edited volumes including Marbury v. Madison: Documents and Commentary (Congressional Quarterly, 2002), The Democracy Sourcebook (MIT, 2003), Constitutional Politics in Canada and the United States (SUNY, 2004), and Constituting Women: The Gender of Constitutional Jurisprudence (Cambridge, 2004). He is the author of Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2004).

Karen Knop is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and Director of the JD/MA (International Relations) Programme at the University of Toronto. Her book Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law (Cambridge, 2002) was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the American Society of International Law. She is the editor of Gender and Human Rights (Oxford, 2004) and co-editor of Re-Thinking Federalism: Citizens, Markets and Governments in a Changing World (University of British Columbia Press, 1995).

Mattias Kumm is an Associate Professor, New York University School of Law. Professor Kumm studied Law, Philosophy and Political Sciences in Kiel, Paris and Cambridge, MA before joining NYU. He was a Graduate Fellow at the Program of Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School of Government and an Emile Noel Fellow at Harvard Law School, and taught courses on EU Law at the European Institute in Florence as well as Tufts University. His teaching and research interests concern the Law of the European Union, Comparative Constitutional Law, International Law and Jurisprudence. He focuses on how democratic constitutionalism responds to and guides the establishment of transnational forms of governance. He is the Director of the J.S.D. Program as well as and LL.M.-J.S.D. Program in International Law at NYU School of Law. Publications include: “Who is the final arbiter of constitutionality in Europe?” (1999) 36 Common Market Law Review 356-381, “Constitutionalizing Subsidiarity in Integrated Markets”, in Halberstam & Maduro eds., The Constitutional Challenge in Europe and America: People, Power, and Politics (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2004), “The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict: The case of the EU and its Member States” (forthcoming 2004), “Constitutional Rights as Principles: On the Structure and Domain of Constitutional Justice” , International Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming 2004) and “International Law in National Courts: The International Rule of Law and the Limits of the Internationalist Model” , (2003) 44 Va. J. Int'l L. 19.

Mayo Moran is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. She served as Associate Dean from January 2000 to June 2002. Professor Moran completed her LL.B. at McGill University and subsequently obtained an LL.M. from the University of Michigan and an S.J.D from the University of Toronto. She has published in comparative constitutional law, private law, and legal and feminist theory. Her book Rethinking the Reasonable Person was recently published by Oxford University Press. Professor Moran's work focuses on how our practices and theories of responsibility come to terms with discrimination. She is currently engaged in a project on reparations theory and transitional justice that examines the limits and possibilities of law, particularly private law, in redressing widespread historic wrongdoing. Professor Moran is also involved in litigation, primarily involving the equality guarantee under the Charter and including the on-going Chinese Canadian Head Tax claim.

Ed Morgan is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. He was a law clerk to Madam Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1984-85. From 1986-89 he was a professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, from 1989-97 he practiced civil litigation at Davies, Ward & Beck, and in 1998 he rejoined the Faculty of Law as a full time professor teaching in the fields of constitutional law and international law. He has published a book, International Law and the Canadian Courts (Carswell, 1990), and numerous law journal articles, case comments and journalism pieces dealing with current legal issues. He was national legal counsel to the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1998 to 2001, and is currently Chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Ontario Region. He has represented numerous public interest groups in human rights, constitutional and international law matters, including the PEN Canada, the Writers Union of Canada, the Canadian Arab Federation, the Assembly of First Nations, the St. Helena Constitutional Commission, the Epilepsy Association of Toronto, and NORML Canada.

Annelise Riles is Professor of Law and Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. She has conducted research in China, Japan, and the Pacific.  Her work focuses on the transnational dimensions of legal theories and institutions.  Her first book, The Network Inside Out, won the American Society of International Law's Certificate of Merit for 2000-2002.  Her second book, Rethinking the Masters of Comparative Law, is a cultural history of Comparative Law presented through its canonical figures.  A forthcoming edited collection, Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge, brings together lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists and historians of science.  She is currently writing a book based on anthropological fieldwork among financial regulators in Tokyo and New York about the cultural practices of lawyers, and their effect on the transnational practice of law. Professor Riles is also Editor of The Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR).

Kent Roach is a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and Yale and a former law clerk to Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada. Professor Roach is the author of eight books and over 80 articles and chapters published in Canada and abroad. His books include Constitutional Remedies in Canada (Canada Law Book, 1994 and annual supplements), which was the winner of the 1997 Owen Prize for best law book in Canada; Due Process and Victims’ Rights: The New Law and Politics of Criminal Justice (University of Toronto Press, 1999), which was short-listed for the 1999 Donner Prize for best public policy book in Canada; The Supreme Court on Trial: Judicial Activism or Democratic Dialogue (Irwin Law, 2001), which was short-listed for the 2001 Donner Prize; September 11: Consequences for Canada (McGill Queens University Press, 2003), which was named one of the five most significant books of 2003 by the Literary Review of Canada; and (with Robert J. Sharpe) Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey (University of Toronto Press, 2003), which was winner of the 2004 J.W. Dafoe Prize for the book making the best contribution to our understanding of Canada. He is the author of Criminal Law, and co-author with Robert J. Sharpe and Katherine Swinton of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Irwin’s Essentials of Canadian Law Series. He is also the co-author (with Ken Jull and Todd Archibald) of Regulatory and Corporate Liability: From Due Diligence to Risk Management, to be published by Canada Law Book. He is the co-editor of two collections of essays, Restorative Justice and Criminal Justice (Hart, 2002) and The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada’s Anti-terrorism Bill (University of Toronto Press, 2001), has published three casebooks on criminal law, constitutional law and civil procedure, and is a contributor to the Oxford Companion to Legal Scholarship. Since 1998, Professor Roach has been editor-in-chief of the Criminal Law Quarterly. In 2002, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is presently serving on a five person research committee for the Royal Commission into events concerning Maher Arar. In addition to his academic work, Professor Roach has represented Aboriginal and civil liberties groups in many interventions before the courts, including in the landmark Supreme Court of Canada cases of Stillman, Latimer, Gladue and Sauve.

Michel Rosenfeld is the Justice Sydney L. Robins Professor of Human Rights at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Constitutional Law published by Oxford University Press and President of the U.S. Association of Constitutional Law. He was President of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) from 1999-2004. He has lectured widely in all continents and has published extensively in the fields of constitutional law, comparative constitutionalism and legal philosophy. He is currently working on a book entitled The Identity of the Constitutional Subject (Routledge, forthcoming 2005). Other books he has published include: Comparative Constitutionalism: Cases and Materials (West, 2003) (co-author); The Longest Night: Polemics and Perspectives on Election 2000 (California, 2002) (co-editor); Just Interpretations: Law Between Ethics and Politics (California, 1998), which has been translated into French a and Italian; Habermas on Law and Democracy: Critical Exchanges (California, 1998) (co-editor); Constitutionalism, Identity, Diference and Legitimacy: Theoretical Perspectives (Duke, 1994) (editor); and Affirmative Action and Justice: A Philosophical and Constitutional Inquiry (Yale, 1991), which was named outstanding book on human rights in the United States in 1992.
Andras Sajó is University Professor at Central European University and a Hauser Global Law Faculty member of the New York University Law School. Professor Sajó was the founding dean of Legal Studies at Central European University. Professor Sajó has been deeply involved in legal drafting throughout Eastern Europe. In addition, he has participated or advised in drafting the Ukrainian, Georgian, and South African constitutions. He has served as Counsel to the President of the Republic of Hungary and he chaired the Media Codification Committee of the Hungarian Government. He was also the principal draftsman of the Environment Code for the Hungarian Parliament, and the founder and speaker of the Hungarian League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty. He has served as Deputy Chair of the National Deregulation Board of Hungary. He is a member of the American Law Institute and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Kim Lane Scheppele is John J. O'Brien Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She received an A.B. degree from Barnard College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago. Her primary field is comparative constitutional law and she has spent nearly half of the last decade working under three different grants from the American National Science Foundation in post-socialist countries undergoing constitutional transformations. In 2004-2005, she will be a fellow in the Law and Public Affairs Program at Princeton University, where she will finish her book based on this research called How Constitutions Work: Rethinking Constitutional Theory through Constitutional Ethnography. Professor Scheppele also works on the subject of constitutions under stress, most recently writing about post-9-11 responses in comparative perspective. Her book Legal Secrets (Chicago, 1988) won special recognition from the American Sociological Association and, in earlier form, a dissertation prize from the American Political Science Association. She has won numerous teaching awards, both at the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of Michigan, where she taught political science for 12 years.

David Schneiderman is an Associate Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. He was called to the Bar of British Columbia in 1984 where he practised law. He then served as Research Director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in Toronto from 1986-89, and was Executive Director of the Centre for Constitutional Studies at the University of Alberta from 1989-99. Professor Schneiderman has authored numerous articles on Canadian federalism, the Charter of Rights, Canadian constitutional history, and constitutionalism and globalization. He also has edited several books, including The Quebec Decision: Perspectives on the Supreme Court Ruling on Secession (Lorimer, 1999); Charting the Consequences: The Impact of the Charter of Rights on Canadian Law and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 1997) with Kate Sutherland; Police Powers in Canada: The Police Power in History, Law, and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 1993) with R.C. MacLeod; Social Justice and the Constitution: Perspectives on a Social Union for Canada (Carleton University Press, 1992) with Joel Bakan; Conversations: Women and Constitutional Reform (Centre for Constitutional Studies, 1992); Freedom of Expression and the Charter (Carswell, 1991), and Language and the State: The Law and Politics of Identity (Les Éditions Yvon Blais, 1991). He is founding editor of the quarterly Constitutional Forum Constitutionnel and founding editor-in-chief of the journal Review of Constitutional Studies.

Richard Simeon is Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the University of Toronto in 1991, Professor Simeon was Professor of Political Studies at Queen's University where he was also Director of the School of Public Administration (1985-91) and of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations (1976-83). He was Vice-Chair, of the Ontario Law Reform Commission 1989 to 1995. From 1983 to 1985, he was a Research Coordinator (Institutions) for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Canada's Development Prospects --the Macdonald Commission. He also served as a member of the Ontario Advisory Committee on Confederation, from 1977-82, and in 1990 was a member of an advisory group to the Premier on the Constitution. He has had visiting appointments at UBC, University of Essex, McMaster University and the University of Cape Town. In 1998 he was William Lyon McKenzie King Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University. Professor Simeon's primary interests and writing have been on Federalism, Public Policy and the Constitution in Canada, together with a larger interest in the interactions between state and society in advanced western nations. Since the adoption of the democratic constitution in South Africa in 1996, he has closely followed the process of democratic consolidation and institutional capacity building there. In 1997 and 1999, he co-taught a course in the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, analyzing the constitution comparatively. He has written widely and been a frequent contributor to public debates on these matters. His early work includes Federal-Provincial Diplomacy: The Making of Recent Policy in Canada (1972) and Small Worlds: Provinces and Parties in Canadian Political Life (1982). More recently he has published State, Society and the Development of Canadian Federalism (1990) with Ian Robinson; Toolkits and Building Blocks: Constructing a New Canada (1991), co-edited with Mary Janigan; Towards a Social Contract: Can We Make Hard Decisions as if Democracy Matters? (1994); Rethinking Federalism: Citizens, Markets and Governments in a Changing World (1995), co-edited with Karen Knop, Sylvia Ostry and Katherine Swinton;  Degrees of Difference: Canada and the United States in a Changing World, with Keith Banting and George Hoberg (1997); Political Science and Canadian Federalism: Seven Decades of Scholarly Engagement (2002) and Canadian Federalism: Seven Decades of Scholarly Engagement (2002). His current research and writing is focused on federalism and constitutionalism in divided societies, democratic consolidation, and relations among language groups in Canadian Civil Society. Simeon has recently been appointed a Member of the Advisory Committee of the Club de Madrid, an international organization of former Heads of State and Government dedicated to democratic transition and consolidation.

Mark Tushnet is Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is the co-author of four casebooks, including the most widely used casebook on American constitutional law, has written twelve books, including a two-volume work on the life of Justice Thurgood Marshall, and has edited four others. He was President of the Association of American Law Schools in 2003. In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Neil Walker has been professor of Law at the European University Institute, Florence, since 2000. He is the author of many articles and books on questions of national and transnational constitutional law and theory. His recent work has concentrated on the constitutional legitimacy of the European Union as a prototype post-state polity, and also on the EU's developing profile in the area of freedom, security and justice. His most recent volumes are two edited collections, Convergence and Divergence in European Public Law (Hart, 2002) and Sovereignty in Transition (Hart, 2003).

Neil Walker has been Professor of European law at the European University Institute, Florence, since 2000, and is the current Dean of Studies of the EUI. He has written extensively on questions of national and postnational constitutional theory, and also on question of policing and security in both national ad transnational contexts. His recent publications include two edited collections - Sovereignty in Transition (Hart, 2003) and Europe's Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (Oxford, 2004).

Lorraine Weinrib is a Professor of Law, at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, where is she is cross-appointed to the Department of Political Science. Prior to her appointment to the University of Toronto in 1988, Professor Weinrib practiced constitutional law in the Crown Law Office in the Ministry of the Attorney General (Ontario) for 15 years, holding the position of Deputy Director of Constitutional Law and Policy at the time of her departure in 1988. While in government, she prepared and argued cases at every level of court addressing questions of federal-provincial division of powers, rights issues and structural features of the Canadian Constitution. She also provided advice on constitutional questions to government ministries, and worked on the litigation and policy development leading up to the adoption of the Charter. She acted as counsel to the province of Ontario in major cases in the Supreme Court of Canada, including the major cases legitimating the adoption of the Charter, the early cases on justification of limitation on Charter rights, as well as the leading case on the legislative override embodied in s. 33 of the Charter. She now teaches introductory and advanced courses on the Charter, constitutional litigation, comparative constitutional law, and constitutional history, interpretation and theory at the University of Toronto as well as an annual intensive course in comparative constitutional law at the Tel Aviv Faculty of Law. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School, at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. In addition, she taught a course in comparative constitutional law in the Tulane Summer Program in Comparative Law in June 2004. Professor Weinrib is a member of the editorial board of I-CON, the International Journal of Constitutional Law. She has published a series of articles on constitutional issues related to the adoption, interpretation and legitimacy of the Charter, the development and legal framework of the post-WWII constitutional state, and the analytic methodology of comparative constitutional law. Her publications have appeared in Canada, the United States, Israel, the Caribbean and South Africa. She is now working on a monograph entitled The Supreme Court of Canada in the Age of Rights.

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