Law Commons^™

Theocratic Constitutionalism: An Introduction To A New Global Legal Ordering, Larry Catá Backer

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The twentieth century has seen a fundamental shift in the ways in which constitutions are understood. By the middle of the twentieth century, a new sort of constitutionalism emerged, rejecting the idea of the legitimacy of every form of political selfconstitution. The central assumptions of this new constitutionalism were grounded in the belief that not all constitutions were legitimate, and that legitimate constitutions shared a number of universal common characteristics. These common characteristics were both procedural (against arbitrary use of state power) and substantive (limiting the sorts of policy choices states could make in constituting its government and exercising governance …