Comparative Public Law

The course aims at providing students with the method, tools and categories of comparative law to be applied to understand, from a diachronic and synchronic point of view, the legal traditions and the variety of forms of State, forms of Government and centre-periphery relations (included secession processes) of countries belonging to different geopolitical areas and sharing different concepts of Constitution. Therefore particular attention will also be paid to the crisis of constitutionalism and to new conceptual categories, such as "abusive constitutionalism", "authoritarian constitutionalism", "hybrid constitutionalism" and "unstable constitutionalism", with a view to studying new phenomena regarding the legal transplant of human rights protection and the separation of powers principles only in nominal terms.

At the end of the course, students will have a fundamental knowledge of the different types of Constitutions from a comparative perspective and a good understanding of the various forms of State, forms of Government and centre-periphery relations in the leading countries belonging to specific geopolitical areas. Thanks to their active participation in lectures, students will develop good critical analysis and communication skills in the field of comparative public law. They will be able to apply the comparative method to new case studies, primarily to assess the impact of constitutional changes on international relations and vice versa.