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CIAO DATE: 10/04

What Constitutions Can Do (But Courts Sometimes Don't):Property, Speech, and The Influence of Constitutional Norms on Private Law

Oliver Gerstenberg

Working Paper No. 110
May 2004

Minda De Gunzburg Center for European Studies

Abstract

Against the background of the ECtHR's recent decision in Appleby v UK (a European “counterpart” to the well-known US Supreme Court decision in Marsh v Alabama) the paper addresses, first, the issue of the influence, often perceived as dilemmatic, of human rights norms and constitutional norms on private law. In a second step, then, the paper discusses the promise—and a possible dilemma—of “comparative constitutionalism” as an engine of a more denationalized “constitutional patriotism”: the dilemma that we trade the “closure” of domestic exceptionalism against the new, systemic “closure” of “too much” judicial comity and professionalism, the closure of a new Juristenrecht.

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