Taking Global Constitutionalism Seriously: A Framework for Discourse

認真看待全球憲政主義：一個對話框架的提出

Globalization leads to many issues, for example the rise of global constitutionalism. How do we perceive the rise of global constitutionalism? What is the best way for us to understand the proper role that the global constitutionalism can play in the globalizing world? The main purpose of this paper is to argue that scholars should take the rise of global constitutionalism more seriously, and propose a “framework for discourse” for ameliorating the effect of grasping the global constitutionalism. This “framework for discourse” is based on a macroscopic and structural-functional approach. Structurally analyzing, on one hand, this paper asserts that scholars should treat the rise of global constitutionalism as an umbrella paradigm of the overall architecture of constitutionalism, so that it may unite different discourses about global constitutional order. On the other hand, relying on a functional observation, this paper claims that because efforts for taking global constitutionalism as an instant project-in-practice are premature, scholars might perceive global constitutionalism as a mindset for mapping a Global Republic of Constitutionalism (GROC). Under the influence of this mindset, some critical concerns with mapping a Global Republic of Constitutionalism must be taken into account, including those concerns in respect to the Republic’s foundation, configuration, and limitation.