University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
CONSTITUTIONAL ROUNDTABLE

presents

Stephen Gardbaum

UCLA Law School

Reassessing the New Commonwealth Model of Constitutionalism

Wednesday, December 2, 2009
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park

In this work-in-progress, I present an overall and comparative assessment of what eight years ago I termed “the new Commonwealth model of constitutionalism” in light of subsequent experience and sustained academic attention to it in each of Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.  The aim is to evaluate the success and distinctiveness of the new model as a whole, and the extent to which practice is living up to theory. 

Stephen Gardbaum is MacArthur Foundation Professor of International Justice and Human Rights at UCLA.  He is a graduate of Oxford, London, Columbia and Yale Universities and a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales.  His scholarship focuses on comparative constitutional rights jurisprudence, federalism and constitutional theory, and his current research project is a reassessment of “the new Commonwealth model of constitutionalism.”  Recent publications include: “The Myth and the Reality of American Constitutional Exceptionalism,” Michigan Law Review (2008), “Human Rights as International Constitutional Rights,” European Journal of International Law (2008), “Limiting Constitutional Rights,” UCLA Law Review (2007), and “Where the (State) Action Is,” International Journal of Constitutional Law (2006).  His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts, and widely translated.

A light lunch will be served.

For more workshop information, please contact Professor Lorraine Weinrib at l.weinrib@utoronto.ca or Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.