Winter Session 2009 of the Comparative Constitutional Law Project

On November 18-21, 2009 the first Winter Session within the scope of the three-year Project for young teachers from the CIS countries "Comparative Constitutional Law: Theory and Methodology in the Context of Constitutional Reforms" took place in Saint-Petersburg. The Session was organized by the Institute of Law and Public Policy in association with the Law School of Saint-Petersburg State University.

Theoretical studies were devoted to the problems of constitutional review, and the participants discussed such important issues of the topic as:

• The birth of constitutional review in the US. The basic framework and institutional considerations;
• Constitutional review in Germany. The institutional framework and fundamental concepts;
• Theories of constitutional review. US classics and European perspectives.

On November 20 the teachers and participants of the Project visited XII International Forum on Constitutional Justice "Property Rights and Free Enterprise: Constitution in Practice" which took place under the aegis of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.

During this Winter Session the participants introduced results of their work on individual projects according to the topics defined in the course of the previous Summer School. The papers of each participant are becoming solemn researches with the use of comparative constitutional methodology. Further development of the individual projects will be introduced during preparations to the Summer School 2010, and the basic issues for this process were defined at the last discussion on November 21.