Thinking About Constitutionalism at the Start of the Twenty-First Century

At the beginning of a new century, constitutional democracy seems ascendant almost to the point of a universal inevitability. What follows is in part a cautionary tale and in part an assessment of where we now stand in one of history's most hopeful long-term trends. An examination of the diffusion of constitutional democracy, and of general trends in cross-national constitutional developments since World War II, leads to a consideration of the manner and extent to which modern constitutionalism embodies a recapitulation of human cultural and political evolution. The culture-power-justice nexus that characterizes modem constitutionalism was first dissected by Montesquieu, and an examination of his approach to constitutionalism provides a useful window into why we developed the political technology of constitutional democracy and why the future of this technology is not a foregone conclusion. Copyright , Oxford University Press.