Interest in comparative constitutional law has historically come in
waves, typically triggered by dramatic examples of constitution-making
– in the aftermath of the Second World War, in the era of decolonization
and in the third wave of democratization that began with the displacement
of Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and continued
through the breakdown of the Soviet Union and its satellites in Central
and Eastern Europe (Fontana 2011).1 During each wave a persistent set
of issues arises about the boundaries of the field: How is it related to
the study of comparative politics, for example, or what is its relation to
normative theories of liberal constitutionalism?