Teaching Comparative Perspectives in the Domestic Constitutional Law Class: A Step by Step Primer

Abstract

Comparative constitutional law has taken off as a popular subject for U.S. law schools in the last decade. Questions have arisen about whether, and how, to integrate such comparative perspectives into domestic constitutional law classes so that all students are exposed to such approaches, not just those who take upper level seminars. This brief essay provides a short step by step description of how to seamlessly integrate comparative perspectives into an American constitutional law survey class. Law professors in other countries can use this method to integrate American or other perspectives. The key is to raise at least one foreign perspective per major course topic. This essay will also demonstrate that foreign law does not have a “liberal” interpretive bias as alleged by some scholars.

Keywords: Constitutional law, comparative law, interpretation