Volume 12, Issue 2 - Global Constitutionalism and Human Rights, Co-edited by Iddo Porat and Gila Stopler

In the late twentieth century constitution-designers came to understand that, in addition to the three classic Montesquiean functions of law-making, law-applying, and law-interpreting, constitutional institutions had to perform an additional function, that of protecting the constitution itself. That function is performed by constitutional courts, but also by agencies concerned with elections and with corruption. A case study of an important anti-corruption inquiry in South Africa illustrates the proposition that institutions protecting the constitution must combine independence from other political actors with some degree of accountability to them. Following the case study, the Article examines some general characteristics of these institutions, sketching some of the questions about independence and accountability that constitution-designers must consider. Among those questions are the possibility of too much independence, with the institutions having a greater impact on political outcomes than is appropriate, too much responsiveness to non-political but professional concerns such as legality and the details of accounting conventions, and of course too much accountability to the very political institutions that these agencies are designed to regulate. Throughout the Article emphasizes the role of conflicts of interest both in setting the agenda for these agencies and in posing the risk that the agencies will undermine rather than protect the constitution.

The doctrine of proportionality has received sustained attention from comparative constitutional scholars. Yet it is an area where courts, and scholars, have made limited use of empirical or inter-disciplinary approaches to constitutional comparison. The article calls for a change in this practice as part of a broader call for greater dialogue between scholars and practitioners of conceptual and more empirical forms of constitutional comparison.

Across a number of countries including Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, incumbent presidents in Latin America have recently sought to amend their constitutions to eliminate or weaken presidential term limits. In some cases, these efforts to extend terms have been part of broader projects to consolidate power, weaken other state institutions, and tilt the electoral playing field in favor of incumbents. From a legal perspective, these cases are interesting because they highlight the limits of tools limiting constitutional change, such as eternity clauses and the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine, to constrain potentially anti-democratic or anti-liberal forms of constitutional change. Although constitutional texts in most of these cases gave courts ample ammunition to reject attempts to eliminate term limits or at least to force those changes down more demanding paths, courts did not stand in the way of most of these efforts and in some cases even used the doctrines to eliminate rather than protect term limits. The case studies highlight the extent to which the “superficial” spread of doctrines controlling constitutional change may fail to block, and indeed may promote, forms of constitutional change that threaten liberal democratic constitutionalism. It also suggests possibilities for deepening the effectiveness of transnational dialogue on these issues.

How is legitimacy to be secured for constitution-like legal orders operating beyond the state? Some scholars recommend connecting aspects of global law to human rights adjudication and enforcement by adopting their preferred method for resolving conflicts, namely, proportionality analysis. Adopting a frame of analysis widely embraced by apex courts might generate the requisite regime legitimacy, it is argued. This turns out to be a strategy that is difficult to pursue in the realm of international investment law, a global legal order made up of over 3,300 investment and regional treaties, enforced by private systems of dispute resolution, that incorporates standards of treatment familiar to national constitutional law. By undertaking an analysis of statements made by relevant actors in the field, principally investment lawyers and arbitrators, we learn that there is not that much interest in taking up proportionality analysis, despite the legitimacy problems that continue to dog the system. Whatever the purported advantages of turning to proportionality, it turns out that investment lawyers and arbitrators are not so interested in embracing logics other than one preoccupied with owing solicitude to foreign investors. This reluctance renders investment law a less legitimate, and therefore less sustainable, form of constitution-like global law.

There is probably no conceptualization of rights more famous than Ronald Dworkin’s claim that they are “trumps.” This seems to stand in stark contrast to the dominant, proportionality-based strand of rights discourse, according to which rights, instead of trumping competing interests, ultimately have to be balanced against them. The goal of this article is to reconcile Dworkin’s work and proportionality and thereby make a contribution to our understanding of both. It offers a critical reconstruction of Dworkin’s theory of rights which does away with the misleading label of rights as “trumps” and shows that, far from being in conflict with proportionality, properly understood Dworkin’s work supports and supplements that doctrine and provides a much-needed account of its moral foundation as being about human dignity, freedom, and equality.