Constitutional Comparativism Today: The Difficult Farewell to Legal Ptolemaicism

The article analyses the problems & challenges of constitutional comparativism today. It describes the reasons for the persistence of legal Ptolemaicism which focuses exclusively on national law & continues to dominate most of constitutional law scholarship. In Germany, particular reasons & circumstances have frustrated the development of an important comparative constitutional law scholarship, eg., the strong practical orientation of legal education & legal scholarship & the introverted fascination with the Basic Law & constitutional jurisprudence. The article goes on to describe the practical & theoretical purposes of constitutional comparativism. It underlines that one of the main theoretical purposes of comparative law is to enable the national lawyer to look at his own constitutional law in a fresh, distanced, alienated way. As comparison always consists in the analysis of differences & similarities, it is not surprising that comparatists usually fall prey to two competing ideologies which the article terms the ideology of similarity & the ideology of difference. While the ideology of similarity has traditionally prevailed in most of private law comparative scholarship, it is also gaining ground in constitutional comparativism due to the influence of European integration which tends to favor the search for common ground among the constitutions of the Member States. However, the theoreticians of difference may help us to remain sensible to the different historical & cultural contexts even if the texts start to resemble each other more & more. Instead of choosing between the two ideological orientations, comparativism should learn from both in order to remain attentive simultaneously to the similarities & the differences between the constitutional systems at hand. Comparative constitutionalism might then become the basis for a modern constitutional theory whose models & typologies could in turn deepen future comparative law scholarship. Adapted from the source document.