The course aims at providing the students with the main instruments for the analysis of the global crisis affecting constitutional democracy and fundamental rights protection across the globe through a comparative legal method. The participants in the course will learn how to rethink traditional concepts of constitutionalism – such as democracy, rule of law, sovereignty – under a critical perspective. They will be introduced to the main debates surrounding the research and the scholarship inquiry into this field. The course will combine an institutional and conceptual map of this global crisis with an empirical scenario, according to which the crisis of constitutional democracy will be geographically map. The course aims to train the students to better understand the comparative constitutional dimensions of political and societal developments. In particular, the course aims to allow the students to: • understand the main legal problems and controversies characterizing democratic constitutionalism today; • distill similarities and differences amongst constitutional crisis taking place in different scenarios • improve their ability to engage in a critical analysis of basic concepts of public law • be able to assess the pros and cons of the implementation and enforcement of the law in context, depending on the features of a specific legal system and in compliance with the supranational and the international constraints. Instructors, in line with the educational goals connected to the Millennium Development Goals, will mainstream gender equality (also from an intersectional perspective) in the lectures. They will also underscore how the analyzed weaknesses of contemporary constitutional democracies affect minority groups and traditionally discriminated communities.

Knowledge and understanding: By the end of the course, students achieve an advanced knowledge of legal scholarship in the field of constitutional crisis and constitutional regression. They will be able to deal with the problems connected to such crises from the legal perspective. Students will also achieve an understanding of dynamics connected to these issues deriving from the increasing interpenetration of national (and often subnational), supranational and international aspects. Applying knowledge and understanding: Students will be able to apply the knowledge acquired during this course for their future professional activities. Namely, they will be able to: disentangle the legal aspects from the political, societal and economic aspects of international and national crises problems, relying on comparative legal scholarship; write commentaries, briefs or case notes for policy-makers, private institutions and interest groups on the issues tackled during the course; provide legal consultancy to stakeholders operating in the fields of rights’ violation and constitutional regression. Making judgements: Students will consolidate their ability to carry out autonomous research and elaborate information from an independent and original perspective.

The course consists of two parts, during which students are invited to actively participate through presentations, which form an important part of the course. Namely, the first part of the lectures, delivered by the instructors and by high-profile guest lecturers, will focus on the main challenges to constitutional democracies, focusing on one specific constitutional institution or concept in crisis. The second part of the lectures will directly involve students in mapping the crisis of constitutional democracy and fundamental rights protection geographically through students’ presentations, which will form the ground for instructors-led debates providing for a case-based application of the theoretical concepts investigated in the first part of the course. A monographic part of the course will be focused on the institutional crisis in Israel.

(selected chapters), András Sajó, Renáta Uitz, Stephen Holmes, Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism, 2022

Instructors will use enquiry-based methodologies to make the most of the active and research-oriented participation of the students as learning devices. Students will be evaluated throughout the course through multiple choice tests. Depending on the number of students enrolled, each student or each group of students will prepare a presentation, based on assigned readings, on the developments of a specific geographical dimension in the global map of the crisis of constitutional democracy.

The assessment of the proficiency for this course is articulated as follows: - 25% of the grade will be based on the final oral exam - 25% of the grade will be based on a take-home test concerning the monographic part on Israel. - 25% of the grade will be determined by the quality of the presentation and by the active involvement in the group discussion - 25% of the grade will be determined by an intermediate multiple choice test, assessing the knowledge of the conceptual and institutional map of the crisis of constitutional democracy. Students failing to attend the multiple-choice test will write a short essay on a topic agreed with the instructor. Non-attending students will be assigned with extra-readings to be discussed during the final oral exam.

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