Dieter Grimm teaches constitutional law at Humboldt University Berlin and the Yale Law School. From 1987-1999 he served as Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. From 2001-2007 he was the Director of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study) whose Permanent Fellow he continues to be. He was Visiting Professor at Harvard, New York University, Toronto, Rome, Kolkata, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Academia Europaea and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds honorary doctoral degrees from the universities of Toronto, Göttingen, Porto Alegre, and Bucarest. He has widely published on matters of constitutional law, constitutional history, constitutional theory, comparative constitutionalism, and European Union law.

• I. Introduction


• 1: The Origins and Transformation of the Concept of the Constitution


• II. Origins


• 2: Conditions for the Emergence and Effectiveness of Modern Constitutions


• 3: Basic Rights in the Formative Eras of Modern Society


• 4: The Concept of Constitution in Historical Perspective


• III. Concepts and Function


• 5: The Function of Constitutions and Guidelines for Constitutional Reform


• 6: Integration by Constitution


• IV. Interpretation


• 7: Fundamental Rights in the Interpretation of the German Constitutional Court


• 8: Return to the Traditional Understanding of Fundamental Rights?


• V. Adjudication


• 9: Constitutional Courts and Constitutional Interpretation at the Interface of Law and Politics


• 10: Constitutional Adjudication and Democracy


• VI. The Future


• 11: The Future of Constitutionalism


• 12: Can Democracy by Bargaining be Constitutionalized?


• VII. Europeanisation


• 13: The Role of National Constitutions in a United Europe


• 14: The Democratic Costs of Constitutionalisation - The European Case


• VIII. Internationalisation


• 15: The Constitution in the Process of Denationalisation


• 16: Societal Constitutionalism


• 17: Levels of the Rule of Law - On the Possibility of Exporting a Western Achievement


• IX. Conclusion


• 18: The Achievement of Constitutionalism and its Prospects in a Changed World