The Rise and Fall of Comparative Constitutional Law in the Postwar Era

Abstract

There have been four confirmation hearings in the United States Senate for nominees to the Supreme Court since 2004-first, for John Roberts to be the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 2005, and then for Samuel Alito in 2006, Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, and Elena Kagan in 2010 to be Associate Justices. Each nominee faced hundreds of questions from a range of senators on a range of different constitutional issues. Among the thousands of questions asked in these four different Senate confirmation hearings, there were only a few issues that were raised in each of the four. One such issue was the role of comparative constitutional law in the American constitutional system.