Global Constitutionalism

The class compares a variety of proposals that have been advanced to promote constitutional world order.  We begin with traditional conceptions of the balance of power among independent “Westphalian” states and then explore arrangements designed to produce alternative forms of constituted international and world order.  These include liberal and authoritarian internationalism, collective security through the League Covenant and the United Nations Charter, John Rawls’s Law of Peoples and various other contemporary models of international law, global governance networks and global democratization.

In addition to assessing the particular merits and limitations of these visions of world order, we will examine the underlying principles of international politics, ethics and constitutional design that characterize these efforts to establish rules for the globe.