In recent years, constitutionalism as a mode of political
action undertaken by courts and other political entities
has become key to efforts of political reconstruction. In
both South Africa and Eastern Europe, for example,
constitutionalism has become the modus operandi of setting
the framework of new political orders, for coming to
terms with a troublesome past, and for gaining
political legitimacy vis-à-vis global or regional
trans-national institutions. At the same time,
constitutions today, as in the past, remain a crucial site
for contesting and negotiating the boundaries of the
legitimate order and work as a juridico-political
context for affirming and enacting deeply rooted
imaginations of a nation's past, present and future.
Constitutional courts, as well as other constitutional
bodies emerge as major players in these contestations.
We will examine these processes through the specific
examples of the European Union, Hungary and South Africa.
In particular the historical, political, social and
economic dynamics at work in these contexts
concentrating on the making of constitutions, the operation
of constitutional bodies and the entangled notions
of constitutionalism is discussed.
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