Geopolitics and Constitutional Systems

In line with the objectives of the degree programme and the specific curriculum, this course aims to provide students with an understanding of how national legal systems are more and more influenced by the geopolitical area to which they belong and by contrasting transnational or supranational legal systems.
To this end, students will be equipped with the methodological and theoretical tools (e.g. definition of Constitution and review of constitutionality, classification of governments, political decentralisation) to compare the legal systems of States located in different geopolitical areas. A focus will be on the distort and illegal applications of constitutional models, which represent a regression in democracy.
Finally, the course will cover a diachronic and synchronic comparison between the legal system of the US and the systems of the BRIC countries (China, Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa). The aim is to analyse the connection between geopolitics, circulation of constitutional models, transnational law and autonomous legal systems.

By the end of the course, students should have acquired the methodology, concepts and classificatory criteria of comparative public law, as well as an understanding of differences and similarities between different legal systems, with a focus on the US, China, Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa. A comparative methodology will be adopted to describe and analyse such systems.
Through their active participation in lectures, students will also be able to critically analyse mutual interference between geopolitical dynamics and legal systems, and develop communication skills with regard to the public comparative law topics studied. They will be able to apply the comparative methodology on their own with a view to analysing the impact of present and future political and institutional changes in international relations, and vice versa.