¹ Cf. M Kumm, ‘The Cosmopolitan Turn in Constitutionalism: On the Relationship between Constitutionalism in and beyond the State’ in Dunoff, JL and Trachtman, JP (eds), Ruling the World? Constitutionalism, International Law, and Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009).Google Scholar

² There is already a considerable amount of literature on the causal connections between active dialogue among constitutional courts and the generation of global language of constitutionalism. See, for example, Mark Tushnet, who notes that constitutional judges increasingly meet ‘in academic and other conferences, and some serve with others on various transnational bodies’ (M Tushnet, ‘The Inevitable Globalization of Constitutional Law’ (2009) 49 Virginia Journal of International Law 998). See also Perju, V, ‘Constitutional Transplants, Borrowing and Migrations’ (2012) Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law 1304.Google Scholar

³ I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer who urged me to make clear that this is not equivalent to arguing that because we are observing a gradual shift in imagination in constitutional practice, then global constitutionalist theory is on the rise. As mentioned above, it is quite possible that theories help to create the phenomenon that they are supposed to describe for example by nudging legal experts and judges to approach their cases from a different perspective.

⁴ Walker, N, ‘Post-Constituent Constitutionalism? The Case of the European Union’ in Loughlin, M and Walker, N (eds), The Paradox of Constitutionalism: Constituent Power and Constitutional Form (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) 247.Google Scholar

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⁷ Exceptions are White, JB, The Legal Imagination: Studies in the Nature of Legal Thought and Expression (Little, Brown & Co, Boston, MA, 1973)Google Scholar; Antaki, M, ‘The Turn to Imagination in Legal Theory: The Re-Enchantment of the World?’ (2012) 23(1) Law and Critique 1Google Scholar; and recently Loughlin, M, ‘The Constitutional Imagination’ (2015) 78(1) The Modern Law Review 1.Google Scholar

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¹¹ See (n 8) 239.

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¹³ See (n 8) 273.

¹⁴ It should be noted, however, that Arendt compares ‘examples’ with Kant’s ‘schemata’ (not with ‘images’), a comparison, which is not altogether correct in my view (for reasons I will not go into here). See (n 12) 84.

¹⁵ See (n 12) 84.

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²⁰ See (n 12) 84.

²¹ It cannot be concluded from a precedent directly on the decision to be adopted. Rather, one has to make a detour: From precedent ‘one extrapolates its underlying norm, the ratio decidendi; then one subsumes [the decision to be adopted] under the norm’ (M Kriele, Theorie der Rechtsgewinnung (Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1967) 270; my translation).

²² Prior to the act of subsuming, precedents must be found, and this necessarily involves a degree of imaginative freedom (what Scott Brewer calls the ‘uncodifiable imaginative moment in exemplary, analogical reasoning’; see S Brewer ‘Exemplary Reasoning: Semantics, Pragmatics and the Rational Force of Legal Argument by Analogy’ (1996) 109 Harvard Law Review 954).

²³ Posner, R, How Judges Think (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008) 183.Google Scholar

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²⁵ Cf. Arendt, H, On Revolution (Penguin Books, New York, NY, 2006).Google Scholar

²⁶ For Kant imagination is hidden ‘in the depths of the human soul’ (see (n 8) 273) and cannot be viewed as a conscious or reflective activity.

²⁷ An anonymous reviewer has pointed out that what I am labelling in this article as a shift in constitutional imagination is in effect a ‘de-constitutionalisation’ of imagination. Note, however, that this presupposes that the meaning of constitution is fixed and inextricably rooted in statist founding narratives and imaginaries. Such a view finds support on a strand of contemporary literature that criticises global constitutionalism for dismissing the very core of constitutionalism (cf. Kuo (n 5)). From a non-essentialist perspective, however, controversies over the meaning of constitution cannot be resolved by positing a specific feature of the constitution as its essence. A concept’s meaning depends – to a considerable extent – upon its usage. Hence, what needs to be taken into consideration are emerging practices among constitutional interpreters (such as constitutional experts) – and this is essentially what I am doing in this article. I look at how imagination works, when constitutional ideas transcend the conventional boundaries of constitutional law.

²⁸ Thiele, LP, The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006) 48.Google Scholar

²⁹ See (n 16) 123.

³⁰ See (n 25) 43.

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³³ Perhaps the best-known foundation stories belong to religious tradition or to the ancient classics of world literature, such as the Oresteia of Aeschylus or the history of the receipt of the Ten Commandments through Moses on Mount Sinai (see Almog, S, ‘From Sterne and Borges to Lost Storytellers: Cyberspace, Narrative and Law’ (2002) 13 Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal 1.)Google Scholar

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³⁶ See also Michael McConnell for whom Dworkin did not go far enough. In his view, the chain novel metaphor is more useful, when applied more broadly to the constitutional order, thus including other authors. See McConnell, M, ‘The Importance of Humanity in Judicial Review: A Comment on Ronald Dworkin’s ‘‘Moral Reading’’ of the Constitution’ (1997) 65 Fordham Law Review 1269.Google Scholar

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³⁸ See (n 5) Fox-Decent.

³⁹ Cf. Möllers, C, ‘Verfassungsgebende Gewalt – Verfassung – Konstitutionalisierung’ in von Bogdandy, A (ed), Europäisches Verfassungsrecht: Theoretische und dogmatische Grundlagen (Springer, Berlin, 2003) 1.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Michelman, F, ‘Constitutional Authorship by the People’ (1999) 74 Notre Dame Law Review 160.Google Scholar

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⁴² See (n 6).

⁴³ Steilen, M, ‘The Democratic Common Law’ (2011) 10 The Journal of Jurisprudence 437.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Kumm calls it a ‘turn from legal interpretation to the public reason oriented justification’ (n 6) 142.

⁴⁵ Imagination proves to be indispensable for proportionality reasoning, the alleged ‘common grammar for global constitutionalism’ (Cohen-Eliya, M and Porat, I, ‘American Balancing and German Proportionality: The Historical Origins’ (2010) 8() International Journal of Constitutional Law 263Google Scholar). For Alexy, proportionality reasoning allows for a mental representation of the actual arguments presented by the various parties in the political arena. In his view, this form of ‘argumentative representation’ complements democratic representation (cf. Alexy, R, ‘Balancing, Constitutional Review, and Representation’ (2005) 3 International Journal of Constitutional Law 572).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See (n 12) 43.

⁴⁷ See (n 12) 43.

⁴⁸ See on this Appadurai, for whom globalisation delivers the images and narratives of foreign lives (Appadurai, A, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, London, 1998).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See (n 8) 269.

⁵⁰ Arendt, H, Between Past and Future: Aight Exercises in Political Thought (Viking, New York, NY, 1968) 241Google Scholar. Elsewhere she argues that the ‘greater the reach—the larger the realm in which the enlightened individual is able to move from standpoint to standpoint—the more “general” will be his thinking’. See (n 12) 43.

⁵¹ Cf. Perju, V, ‘Proportionality and freedom—An essay on method in constitutional law’ (2012) 1() Global Constitutionalism 360.Google Scholar

⁵² Consider, for example, the Atkins v Virginia case, in which the Supreme Court banned the execution of the mentally retarded. In another, much-discussed case (Lawrence v Texas), judges deal with the question whether states can punish homosexual acts.

⁵³ Whether courts increasingly rely on foreign precedents and example to get a better understanding of the domestic case in question may be disputed, especially with respect to US constitutional law (cf. Cross, FB and Spriggs, JF, ‘Citations in the US Supreme Court: An Empirical Study of Their Use and Significance’ (2010) 2 University of Illinois Law Review 489).Google Scholar

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⁵⁸ Kim Scheppele has provided other examples of how foreign legal examples are being leveraged by Prime Minister Viktor Orban to limit minority rights. Cf. Scheppele, KL, ‘Enforcing the Basic Principles of EU Law through Systemic Infringement Procedures’ in Closa, C and Kochenov, D (eds), Reinforcing the Rule of Law Oversight in the European Union (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ For a criticism of the use of foreign law along these lines, see Posner (Posner, RA, ‘Foreword: A Political Court’ (2005) 119 Harvard Law Review 85).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ To minimise the influence of strategic ‘cherry-picking’, theorists of global constitutionalism, like Vlad Perju, have endeavoured to connect the two above developments in such a way as to subordinate the second to the first. In Perju’s view, ‘the most that can be achieved by expanding the pool of normative references (…) is to inject a degree of reflectiveness into the constitutional discourse at the specific request of citizens, or of other constitutional actors’ (Perju (n 2) 353).

⁶¹ Fredman, S, ‘Foreign Fads or Fashions? The Role of Comparativism in Human Rights Law’ (2015) 64() International and Comparative Law Quarterly 649.Google Scholar

⁶² As Mary Ann Glendon argued, foreign law ‘does not provide blueprints or solutions. But awareness of foreign experiences does lead to the kind of self-understanding that constitutes a necessary first step on the way toward working out our own approaches to our own problems’ (Glendon, MA, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989) 142).Google Scholar

⁶³ See Kuhn, T, Experiencing European Integration: Transnational Lives and European Identity (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Cf. Koikkalainen, S and David, K, ‘Imagining Mobility: The Prospective Cognition Question in Migration Research’ (2016) 42() Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 759.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ See (n 48) 53.