This paper is a review of Gerardo Pisarello’s book, Procesos Constituyentes: Caminos para la Ruptura Democratica. This book examines constitution-making as a global phenomenon, both from a historical and comparative perspective. The author of this paper proposes that a more decisive move from the descriptive to the normative would have been desirable, but concludes that Pisarello’s book should become an obligatory point of reference for all scholars.

In the legal system of the premodern Middle East, the closest thing to an autonomous private organization was the Islamic waqf. This non-state institution inhibited political participation, collective action, and rule of law, among other indicators of democratization. It did so through several mechanisms. Its activities were essentially set by its founder, which limited its capacity to meet political challenges. Being designed to provide a service on its own, it could not participate in lasting political coalitions. The waqf’s beneficiaries had no say in evaluating or selecting its officers, and they had trouble forming a political community. Thus, for all the resources it controlled, the Islamic waqf contributed minimally to building civil society. As a core element of Islam’s classical institutional complex, it perpetuated authoritarian rule by keeping the state largely unrestrained. Therein lies a key reason for the slow pace of the Middle East’s democratization process.

Journal Article Beyond Apples and Oranges Mathias Siems, Mathias Siems, Comparative Law Get access Mathias Siems, Comparative Law( Cambridge University Press, 2014). Julie C. Suk Julie C. Suk *Professor, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, and Visiting Professor, Columbia Law School Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Journal of Comparative Law, Volume 64, Issue 2, 1 July 2016, Pages 512–518, https://doi.org/10.5131/AJCL.2016.0017 Published: 01 July 2016

American and Brazilian courts are traveling quite different paths regarding the question of racial justice. Race neutrality has become an influential interpretive approach in both jurisdictions, a perspective that articulates a depiction of these nations as culturally homogenous societies with the defense of liberal principles as a necessary requirement for social cohesion. Because of the representation of Brazil and the United States as democracies that facilitate integration of all racial groups, courts in these countries have developed an equal protection approach that combines the rhetoric of assimilation and formal equality. However, while the discourse of race neutrality gains continuous political force in the United States, race consciousness is acquiring increasing persuasive power in Brazil. As the implementation of affirmative action programs has expanded into different sectors, various social actors have questioned their constitutionality. Although state and federal courts in Brazil have condemned affirmative action because it supposedly subverts liberal principles and moral consensus about equal racial treatment, the Brazilian Supreme Court has recently classified race neutrality as a strategy of racial domination. Differently from American affirmative action cases, this decision formulated a notion of citizenship that functions as a counterhegemonic narrative. In articulating progressive constitutional principles and a group-oriented equal protection perspective, the Brazilian Supreme Court has significantly contributed to the deconstruction of the traditional discourse of race transcendence. The Court’s decisions may serve as an interesting point of comparison for the debate about affirmative action in the United States, since Brazilian history shows very clearly how race neutrality allows majoritarian groups to defend racial privilege while advocating formal equality as a way to promote social inclusion.

As the ultimate rule of a legal system, a rule of recognition is sometimes viewed as the equivalent of a nation’s constitution. Theoretically and operatively, however, constitutions and rules of recognition are not, and cannot be, the same thing. By employing departmentalism—the theory that each branch of government has the authority to interpret its national constitution for itself—as a challenge to the respective rules of recognition in the United States and the United Kingdom, this Article explores fundamental commitments of constitutionalism in both nations. More specifically, the Article challenges widespread assumptions and assertions about judicial supremacy in the United States and parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom. In doing so, the Article clarifies errors made by prominent constitutional theorists and helps to explain the historical and theoretical development of Anglo-American rule of law values as these have been, and continue to be, identified by the rule(s) of recognition within and across these legal systems.