The Identity of the Constitutional Subject: Selfhood, Citizenship, Culture, and Community

The last fifty years has seen a worldwide trend toward constitutional democracy. But can constitutionalism become truly global?

Relying on historical examples of successfully implanted constitutional regimes, ranging from the older experiences in the United States and France to the relatively recent ones in Germany, Spain and South Africa, Michel Rosenfeld sheds light on the range of conditions necessary for the emergence, continuity and adaptability of a viable constitutional identity - citizenship, nationalism, multiculturalism, and human rights being important elements.

The Identity of the Constitutional Subject is the first systematic analysis of the concept, drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, political theory and law from a comparative perspective to explore the relationship between the ideal of constitutionalism and the need to construct a common constitutional identity that is distinct from national, cultural, ethnic or religious identity.

The Identity of the Constitutional Subject will be of interest to students and scholars in law, legal and political philosophy, political science, multicultural studies, international relations and US politics.

Introduction Part 1: Why Constitutional Identity and for Whom? 1. The Constitutional Subject: Singular, Plural or Universal? 2. The Constitutional Subject and the Clash of Self and Other: On the Uses of Negation, Metaphor and Metonymy Part 2: Producing Constitutional Identity 3. Reinventing Tradition through Constitutional Interpretation: The Case of Unremunerated Rights in the United States 4. Recasting and Reorienting Identity through Constitution-Making: The Pivotal Case of Spain's 1978 Constitution Part 3: Constitutional Identity as Bridge Between Self and Other: Binding Together Citizenship, History and Society 5. Constitutional Models: Shaping, Nurturing and Guiding the Constitutional Subject 6. Models of Constitution Making 7. The Constitutional Subject and Clashing Visions of Citizenship: Can We be Beyond what We are Not? 8. Can the Constitutional Subject go Global? Imagining a Convergence of the Universal, the Particular and the Singular