The Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law presents
A Book Talk on ‘A Theory of African Constitutionalism’
Speaker: Dr Berihun Gebeye, Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg.
Discussants: Dr Kathryn Nash, Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Edinburgh Law School and Dr Massimo Fichera, Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki
About the event
A Theory of African Constitutionalism asks and seeks to answer why we need a new theoretical framework for African constitutionalism and how this could offer us better theoretical and practical tools with which to understand, improve, and assess African constitutionalism on its own terms. By locating constitutional studies in Africa within the experiences, interactions, and contestations of power and governance beginning in precolonial times, the book presents the development and transformation of African constitutional systems across time and place, along with the attendant constitutional designs and practices ranging from the nature and operation of the African state to its vertical and horizontal government structures, to its constitutional rights regime. The book offers both a theoretically and comparatively rich, historically and contextually informed, and temporally and spatially extensive account of the nature, travails, and incremental successes of African constitutionalism with detailed case studies from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa. A Theory of African Constitutionalism provides scholars, policymakers, governments, and constitution builders in Africa and beyond with new insights for reimagining the purpose, substance, and scope of constitutions and constitutionalism.
About the speaker
Berihun Gebeye is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. He teaches and researches comparative constitutional law, human rights, and international law and development in Africa using interdisciplinary approaches and materials. Previously, Berihun has been a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Göttingen and a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia Law School, the Center for Socio-Legal Studies of the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity; a Global Teaching Fellow at the University of Yangon (Myanmar) and a Visiting Professor at the Central European University. Berihun holds degrees in law, human rights, and comparative constitutional law and has extensively published in these fields with a focus on Africa.