Explore the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law

On 27 April 2017, Oxford University Press launched a new online service, the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law, as a key research complement and application to the vast trove of primary constitutional texts and analytical commentary already available in the constitutional law family of products: Oxford Constitutions of the World and US Constitutional Law.

Overseen by the editors at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law, the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law provides a high level of analytic coverage of constitutional law topics in a comparative context. Over 570 articles are currently planned, which are being authored, peer reviewed, and prepared for publication. The encyclopedia articles—modeled on those in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law—address a focused range of topics that seek to provide the best coverage of the essence, character, development, and history of constitutional law from a global perspective. The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law also includes links to articles in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law when making reference to terms covered in the latter reference work.

To offer further insight into the range and depth of this resource, selected articles are made freely available each month. The article on Freedom of the Press is currently one of the articles that have been made freely available.

“Questions of whether media freedom deserves special treatment and, if so, how far it goes may depend on the legal, political, social, and historical circumstances of each state in which the media are embedded.” In the age of “fake news” and accusations that news media are manipulating the populace through the reporting of politically motivated and/or state-motivated errant and deliberately misleading “facts,” Norikazu Kawagishi’s article Freedom of the Press is of particular relevance. The article discusses the constitutional and legal issues over the protection of the free press and in liberal democracies what those protections translate to and provide. This article is one of four new articles published in the April update of the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law.

To view the Freedom of the Press article in its entirety as well as the five other articles that are currently freely available, please visit the links below:

Freedom of the Press
Constitutionalism
Autochthonous Constitutions
Individual Rights
Relation of Constitutional Courts to Supreme Courts
Pouvoir Constituant

To learn more about the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law, please continue reading here.