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 new resource, selected articles are made freely available each month. The article on Constitutionalism is currently one of the freely available articles.

"The idea of constitutionalism—like the ideas of state, government, democracy, power, and law to which it is very closely related—goes right to the heart of some of the very biggest questions about how we can live together." In their article, Constitutionalism, authors Andrew Godden and John Morison provide a necessary exposition of the essence that bring about how power is managed and distributed between government and governed, how people construct and agree to be overseen by an administration and what that means as played out in reality. They discuss values, global examples, and constraints as well as elaborate on cultural affects to constitutionalism and discuss contemporary tensions in constitutionalism. This article is one of eight new articles published in the March update of MPECCoL.

To view the Constitutionalism article in its entirety as well as the four other articles that are currently freely available, please visit the links below:

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.