CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY AND FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS PROTECTION IN CRISIS

The course provides 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. Students 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 mapped. 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.

Basic knowledge of public law and comparative public law.

At the end of the course, students will be able to: • understand the main legal problems and controversies characterizing democratic constitutionalism today; • distill similarities and differences amongst constitutional crises taking place in different scenarios • improve their ability to engage in a critical analysis of basic concepts of public law • 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.

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 focuses on the main challenges to constitutional democracies. The second part directly involves students in mapping the crisis of constitutional democracy and fundamental rights protection through the analysis of selected case studies. A monographic part of the course, led by Gabor Halmai, will be focused on the democratic crisis in Hungary, Poland, Israel and the EU.

V.R. Scotti (ed.), Constitutional Democracies and Fundamental Rights in Crisis: A Handbook for Students, LUP, 2026

Instructors will use enquiry-based methodologies to make the most of the active and research-oriented participation of the students as learning devices. A mid-term multiple-choice test will take place in the middle of the semester. Depending on the number of students enrolled, students may be asked to 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: - 70% of the grade will be based on the final oral exam - 30% of the grade will be determined through continuous assessment (multiple-choice test). Non-compliant and extempted students will be assigned with extra-readings to be discussed during the final oral exam.

None.