Comparative Public Law

The constitutional systems of the countries are increasingly influenced by the geopolitical area to which they belong and by competing "transnational legal orders". In accordance with the objectives of the degree programme, the course therefore aims to provide the students with the definitions and tools (classification of forms of state and of government, various types of decentralization, constitution making, constitutional review, amending procedures) allowing them to compare the constitutional arrangements of countries belonging to different legal systems, also taking into consideration the processes of "abusive constitutional borrowing" as an expression of democratic backsliding. Finally - in order to verify the relationship between geopolitics, circulation of constitutional models, transnational law and autochthonous elements - a diachronic and synchronic comparison will be proposed between the legal systems of Russia (also considering those of other post-Soviet countries), China, Brazil, India and South Africa (Brics countries).

At the end of the course, students are expected to: have understood the fundamentals of the comparative method; have learned about the differences and similarities between the constitutional systems of the main extra-European states and the interaction between their constitutional orders and transnational law; have acquired through the analysis, discussion and presentation of case studies a good capacity for critical analysis and communication issues of public comparative law; are able to apply the comparative method to new case studies that concern the extra-European state institutions, also with the aim of verifying the impact of their political institutional changes on international relations.