Constitutions Compared (5th Edition): An Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law

In this fifth edition, the author has expanded several chapters to provide for even more detail on national legal systems and constitutional comparison. In addition, he has updated the discussion wherever necessary. The book has also been expanded with a larger number of (sub)headings so as to allow for a better overview. Furthermore, this book most notably includes many constitutional developments in the constitutional systems within our scope. Including the 'Brexit' (to be) and the new compositions of the national and the European Parliament. In the previous edition the EU has more extensively been woven into this book, as a constitutional system per se and as an international organization which heavily impacts upon domestic constitutional law. This new edition has been expanded with chapters on human rights as they are protected in the constitutional legal systems, as well as in the multi-layered European legal order. This book has proven its success as a helpful guide for students who are for the first time exploring comparative constitutional law, and a solid foundation for more advanced graduate-level courses. It remains a thorough introduction which purports to give an overview, however with quite a few examples and applications in practice, and also sufficient legal and practical details to be accessible and to the point, whilst at the same time providing for the whole picture and highlighting general constitutional questions and perspectives.

About the Author :
Aalt Willem Heringa (1955) graduated from the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden in 1978, where he worked until 1987 as an assistant professor. He was a visiting researcher at the Centre of European Governmental Studies of the University of Edinburgh (1986) and at the European Research Center of the Harvard Law School (1996). In 1989 he completed his Ph.D. thesis 'Sociale Grondrechten' (Social Rights). He has been working at Maastricht University, the Faculty of Law, since 1987; he was appointed full professor of (comparative) constitutional and administrative law in 1995. He is author and editor of numerous books and articles on Dutch Constitutional law, the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, comparative constitutional law, US constitutional law, Human Rights and legal education.He served for many years as a Member of the Netherlands Commission on Equal Treatment. He is one of the founding editors of the NJCM Bulletin; of EHRC (European Human Rights Cases); of JB and JB+; of the Maastricht Journal of European and comparative law (MJ); and of EVRM Rechtspraak & Commentaar . He served on the supervisory board of Hiil (the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of the Law) and on the Supervisory Board of LVO. He is since 2010 a member/vice chair of the supervisory board of Orbis Medical Center, major care and cure organisation in the south of Limburg province. Since 2012 he also serves on the Conseil d'Administration of Paris University Dauphine.Since 2012 he is director of the Montesquieu Institute Maastricht and he is Head of the Public Law Department. In 2013 he worked as European Co-Dean of the China EU School of Law in Beijing.