Identity of the Constitutional Subject

Michel Rosenfeld is Justice Sydney L. Robins Professor of Human Rights, at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Rosenfeld teaches and is widely published in the fields of American and comparative constitutional law and legal philosophy. His books include Affirmative Action and Justice: A Philosophical and Constitutional Inquiry (1991); Just Interpretations: Law Between Ethics and Politics (1998); and Comparative Constitutionalism: Cases and Materials (2003).

"The Identity of the Constitutional Subject is a book of breadth, depth and impressive learning. It sets a new standard in comparative constitutional analysis." - Joseph Weiler, University Professor and Joseph Straus Professor, New York University School of Law"When the Constitution "speaks", who is actually speaking? And to whom? What about? These old questions are treated by Michel Rosenfeld in an exciting and refreshingly novel way. Using his formidable philosophical and comparative-constitutional expertise, oscillating effortlessly between legal systems as different as the United States and France, Spain and Hungary; referring to thinkers as different as Freud and Rawls, Lacan and Rousseau – Rosenfeld has offered a profound and powerful analysis of "the constitutional subject" that will become essential reading for all those dealing with constitutional theory, comparative law, and political philosophy." - Wojciech Sadurski, Challis Professor of Jurisprudence, The University of Sydney"The challenge of pluralism, writes Michel Rosenfeld, is to forge a political structure held together by a fixed set of norms while leaving room for an accommodation with those who do not accept those norms. The promise and the difficulties of this necessary project are the subjects of Rosenfeld’s magisterial synthesis of political, psychological, theological and theoretical perspectives on the subject of constitutionalism. The result is a trenchant and historically nuanced exploration of issues no one and no nation can afford to ignore." – Stanley Fish, Professor of Law, Florida International University"Michel Rosenfeld has written a provocative and erudite exploration of paradoxes of identity, national and constitutional. Informed by his wide knowledge of constitutionalism around the world, the book offers an account of the different ways in which a nation whose population changes over time can have an enduring national identity and how those different ways can be tied to different forms of national constitutions which do not change over time. As with all important contributions to constitutional theory, not all readers will agree with Professor Rosenfeld's arguments, but the field will surely benefit from his work." – Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

• 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