The Southern Turn in Comparative Constitutional Law: An Introduction

Abstract

This introductory chapter argues for and conceptualizes a “Southern turn” in comparative constitutional law. It takes stock of existing scholarship on the Global South and comparative constitutional law, situates the volume in this context and seeks to move the debate forward. Its argument has three elements: The first is that the “Global South” has already become a term used productively in various disciplines and in legal scholarship, even though in very different and sometimes undertheorized ways. Secondly, we argue that the ‘Global South’ is a useful concept to capture and understand a constitutional experience that is distinct from, and at the same time deeply entangled with, constitutionalism in the Global North. Thirdly, we contend that the Southern turn implies a specific epistemic, methodological and institutional sensitivity that has implications for comparative constitutional scholarship as a whole. This sensitivity embraces epistemic reflexivity, methodological pluralism as well as institutional diversification, collaboration and “slow comparison” and thus points the way towards an understanding of the discipline as “world comparative law”.

Keywords: Comparative constitutional law; Global South; transformative constitutionalism; authoritarian constitutionalism; epistemic reflexivity; comparative methods; slow comparison