Constitutional Law

Faculty of Law

Constitutional Law

Full course description

Constitutional Law (CL) is the first mandatory course of the European Law School bachelor programme. Together with the parallel Skills course, CL lays the foundations for the subsequent contents of the programme.

CL introduces students to core concepts of constitutional law and (multi-level) constitutionalism. These include the rule of law, democracy, and fundamental rights protection, as well as the interplay of national, European, and international norms and institutions in the legal application of these concepts.

This course introduces students to both the underlying ideas and the substantive legal form of main building blocks of Western constitutions:

the idea of the state and statehood;
the basic institutional setups (and differences between them) of states and the European Union
democratic processes and representation;
parliamentarianism;
state forms, and systems of government;
rules and procedures of law-making;
judicial review of legislation and government action;
human rights protection at national and European level.

The course follows a pattern of reasoning from concept to (different forms of) practical realisation and application, highlighting the available range of normative options. CL uses a comparative approach to explore this spectrum along a set of main legal families. However, where relevant it also makes reference a variety of other examples.

Conveying an understanding of constitutional law as a conduit between legal systems and the evolving societal and political contexts in which it operates, the course refers to ongoing large-scale societal challenges and explores their interrelation with constitutional structures.

True to the problem based learning (PBL) approach of the European Law School, students in the course Constitutional Law not only study the mentioned ideas and systems in the abstract but also train to work with concrete legal provisions from different systems to solve legal problems.

Assessment Methods

Constitutional Law uses two assessment methods at two different examination moments, namely

a mid-term assignment consisting of a legal essay on a subject in the context of constitutional law (25% of the final grade), and

a final exam consisting in which students have to formulate legal opinions, i.e. reasoned solutions to hypothetical cases or legal questions.

Course objectives

Upon completion of this course, students will:

understand the basic concepts of constitutional law as a discipline, as well as their social contexts;
be able to identify the main actors relevant to constitutional law at national, European, and international level;
understand the basic concepts associated with constitutionalism;
be able to identify and compare the defining features of the main families of Western constitutional systems, as well as of the European and international legal systems;
be able to analyse the constitutional properties of a given (novel, foreign, or hypothetical) legal system in comparison with these main families;
be able to use their knowledge of the positive constitutional law of various systems and of mechanisms for the protection of fundamental rights to solve legal problems and cases;
understand the basic structure and functioning of the multi-level constitutional systems of the European Union and its member states, including the relevant influences of international law;
be able to explain how international and EU law produce effects in domestic legal systems.
be able to use such knowledge to solve cases involving the effect of international and EU law on (national) constitutional settings.
have knowledge about the concepts of constitutional law from a historical, political and cultural perspective.
recognize the historical, political, economic and societal context in which national, international and European law have developed.

Prerequisites

None

Constitutional Law