Rainer Grote

Prof., Dr. iur., LL.M. (Edinburgh), Senior Research Fellow

Main Fields of Research:

Constitutional Law; Comparative Public Law; Human Rights

Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law

The field of comparative constitutional law has seen increasing academic interest in recent years, not least because of its considerable practical relevance. However, in spite of the widely acknowledged theoretical and practical relevance of the field, reference works are few. The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law seeks to fill this gap. In approximately 600 peer-reviewed entries, it will cover all areas of constitutional law from a comparative perspective.

Constitutionalism, Human Rights, and Islam after the Arab Spring

The protest movement known as the Arab Spring, which resulted in the framing of new constitutions in some countries, the drafting of interim or transitional constitutional documents in others and unprecedented popular debates on the fundamentals of the constitutional system across the whole of Northern Africa and the Middle East, constituted the biggest upheaval of the established political order in an entire world region since the demise of the Soviet Union twenty years earlier. The book aims to analyze and put into perspective the forces and ideas which have driven constitutional change in the Arab world since the beginning of the uprisings in early 2011, as well as to identify the reasons for which most of the reform movements failed, at least in the short run, to achieve lasting democratic change. In seven parts, the book assesses the constitutional upheaval undergone by Arab countries since 2011 from a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on the methods and insights of comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, comparative politics, jurisprudence, and legal history. An introductory chapter explores the main issues and controversies in the constitutional debates of the Arab spring, while the concluding section tries to assess its legacy for the advancement of constitutionalism, democracy, human rights and the rule of law in the region.

Transformative Constitutionalism and Transformative Constitutional Justice

The book project uses the concept of transformative constitutionalism developed by US scholarship to analyze some of the major changes in the fields of constitutional law and constitutional adjudication in the post-World War II era. Following a discussion of the various issues related to the meaning and scope of the concept of transformative constitutionalism and of how the concept is used in the book in the introductory chapter, the second chapter examines the various stages in the development of constitutionalism from the great liberal revolutions of the late 18th century which gave birth to the modern idea of constitutionalism to the early 21th century when the idea and the practice of transformative constitutionalism stood at their apogee. The following chapter examines more closely the main tools and concepts which transformative constitutions employ in order to achieve their transformative purposes. The developments following World War II have shown that in modern constitutional democracies the courts, and especially the constitutional courts, play a crucial role in shaping and giving effect to the transformative mandates and provisions of the constitution. The fourth chapter therefore looks at the origins and subsequent development of constitutional adjudication, and the different forms in which it has been institutionalized. The procedures and instruments which modern constitutional courts have at their disposal and bring to bear on the interpretation and application of the constitution in order to secure transformative outcomes are discussed in the fifth chapter.

As each transformative constitutional project is decisively shaped by the trauma and legacy of the grave injustice to which it attempts to respond by fundamentally reframing the foundations of the legal and political order, a global analysis of the institutions and principles of transformative constitutionalism and transformative constitutional justice supported by a few more or less randomly selected examples can only go so far. The chapters setting out the historical and doctrinal parameters for the comparative analysis of transformative constitutionalism are therefore complemented by chapters looking more closely at the transformative experiences of individual countries, namely the US (especially during the Warren era), Germany, India, Colombia, and South Africa. A final chapter summarizes the changes which the era of transformative constitutional law and jurisprudence has brought for our understanding of the idea and the main tenets of modern constitutional law, its structural implications and the prospects for further development.