Speaker: Su Bian
Abstract:
Since the judicial constitutionalism of the USA is taken by more and more countries in the world as the chief reference point for their constitutional reforms, the political and social implications of classical constitutionalism have to a large extent been left behind in the process of legal transplantation. This lecture aims firstly to lead the students to the classical constitutional tradition, where the constitution is taken as a register for the way of life of the political community, and then traces the evolution of constitutional ideas from the classical to the modern and contemporary constitutionalism. In this perspective, this lecture re-embeds the development of Chinese constitution in its own history and developmental logic. However, this does not mean to deny the basic function of constitutional law in human rights protection, but to seek an objective way for the foreign students to interpret the constitutional history of China, and to review its achievements and drawbacks. Constitution as the fundamental law in establishing and organizing state powers, inevitably reflects the people’s expectations for their political life. In such a sense, the Constitution has its ‘Chinese characteristics’ and is also a civic education engaged by every citizen.
