Jaclyn L. Neo

This book argues that the central problem of modern constitutionalism lies in its inability to adequately account for plural societies. Contemporary constitutional theory continues to presuppose a unified constitutional identity, a singular hierarchy of legal authority, and a coherent legal order. These assumptions obscure the realities of culturally and legally plural societies and contribute to resistance against constitutional recognition of diversity. The book distinguishes between plural constitutions and pluralist constitutions. Plural constitutions describe the empirical presence of multiple authorities, identities, or legal traditions within a constitutional order. Pluralist constitutions, by contrast, treat these pluralities as co-constitutive elements of constitutional meaning. This distinction is both descriptive and methodological. Pluralist constitutionalism posits that the pluralities of authority, identity, and law already recognized in many constitutions should be treated as continuously co-constitutive of constitutional interpretation and practice. While many systems are descriptively plural, they lack a governing principle that gives normative effect to this plurality. In the absence of such a principle, constitutional reasoning tends toward hierarchy, flattening or marginalizing plural forms of authority and identity. The difficulty, therefore, is not plurality itself, but the absence of a constitutional principle capable of mediating it. To address this, the book introduces the principle of semi-autonomy, which structures the relationship between plural normative systems. Semi-autonomy enables these systems to remain distinct while participating in the co-constitutive production of constitutional meaning. To sustain this arrangement, courts require an interpretive methodology capable of engaging multiple sources of law without subsuming them into a single hierarchy. Accordingly, the constitution is reconceived not as a fixed expression of unified authority, but as a framework of mutuality. It provides the conditions under which disagreement, coordination, and coexistence can take place over time, structuring interaction among plural normative communities while preserving their distinctiveness. The book develops a pluralist methodology structured around three interrelated moves: identification, evaluation, and reconciliation. This approach requires courts to recognize plural normative systems, assess their claims, and reconcile them in ways that sustain their co-constitutive role in constitutional reasoning. This framework is examined across two domains: jurisprudential pluralism and jurisdictional pluralism. It shows how different institutional arrangements shape the capacity of courts to sustain semi-autonomy, and how divergences and convergences across plural legal systems are managed. Case studies from New Zealand, Ecuador, Colombia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Nigeria illustrate varying pluralist orientations in constitutional practice. Finally, the book extends pluralist constitutionalism beyond contexts typically associated with cultural diversity, demonstrating that pluralist structures are embedded in a wide range of constitutional systems. It concludes by framing pluralist constitutionalism as a project oriented toward resilient constitutional justice, grounded in responsiveness, reciprocity, and ongoing negotiation among diverse communities.

This article examines the increasing entanglement of anti-constitutionalist populism with constitutional identity. Populists have instrumentalized the concept of “constitutional identity” to legitimize changes to the constitution. While this may lead some to consider abandoning the concept, this article suggests a better response, which involves disentangling the descriptive claim of constitutional identity from its normative claims of immutability. Employing a framework of mis-identity and dis-identity claims as two lines of argument against a presumed “existing constitutional identity,” the article clarifies populist rhetoric as a mis-identity claim that relies on the politics of nostalgia to rewrite founding myths about the nation and its people. Lastly, the article argues that we can better respond to populist instrumentalization by limiting constitutional identity’s normative appeal and situating it squarely within constitutional politics.

Despite being increasingly ubiquitous inhabitants of the constitutional realm, the role of preambles in judicial decision-making remains under-studied in comparative constitutional scholarship. In this Article, we look at how these texts have been employed by courts, regardless of—and often contrary to—their formal legal status and the political expectations of constitution-makers. We show how courts resort to constitutional preambles—whatever their preceding formal legal status—to provide justification and legitimation for expansive views of the judicial function vis-à-vis the political branches. We argue that certain characteristics of preambles make them particularly attractive to courts in this regard: their broad language, their symbolic content and connection with national narratives, and the fact that they often contain elements that are not found elsewhere in the constitution. Moreover, their usefulness for judicial empowerment is independent from (and sometimes in tension with) the understanding of the preamble’s (non-binding) legal status when it was enacted (as in the cases of France and India), and sometimes in contrast to established caselaw (as in the case of Brazil). Accordingly, there is a need to closely examine how preambles have been judicially utilized in order to narrow the gap between drafting assumptions and the interpretive realities in constitutional adjudication.

This introduction to our special issue on ‘Constitutional Legitimacy and Amendments’ presents a framework for a more nuanced understanding of how constitutional change is contested, moving beyond the conventional notion of ‘unconstitutional’ constitutional amendments. We advocate for a clearer distinction between legality and legitimacy when analysing contestation over constitutional change, arguing that focusing exclusively on legality without addressing legitimacy risks oversimplifying constitutional debates and overlooking questions of broader political and social acceptance. We identify three grounds on which the legitimacy of a constitutional amendment may be challenged: lack of representativeness (an amendment is illegitimate if it is not representative of the will of the people); lack of justice (an amendment is illegitimate if it is unjust in a significant manner); and bad faith (an amendment is illegitimate if it is motivated by ulterior motives). We also outline three ways in which legality and legitimacy intersect: (1) legally valid amendments may still face challenges regarding their legitimacy; (2) formally illegal constitutional changes may still be perceived as legitimate; and (3) even amendments that are both legal and legitimate may still require legitimacy to be established through means other than procedural and substantive commitments to legality. By recognising that challenges to constitutional amendments often involve claims of both legality and legitimacy, our framework expands the analysis of constitutional amendments beyond claims based on constitutional identity or unamendability and contributes to a better understanding of how such amendments are contested.

In the spirit of collaborative enterprise, this Afterword builds upon one aspect that the authors had time to only briefly mention but not fully develop: the existence and depth of the gender gap in legal education and its connection to the gender gap in legal academia. I invite the reader to view the gender gap in legal academia as starting not from the point of employment but even before that. After all, if we are to create more opportunities and inculcate a more gender-equitable environment for the legal academy, including increasing the proportion of female academics, we need to also ask the question: From where would these female candidates come? Are there enough candidates in the pipeline? As we broaden our perspective, we see that the gender gap often begins with law schools, and addressing the gender gap in legal academia must include consideration of the gender gap in legal education as a whole.

This article makes the case for adopting a genuinely pluralist perspective when studying constitutional interpretation and sets out the principal forms such inquiries can take. While it has now been accepted that the court-centricity that characterized much of the earlier work on constitutional interpretation must be recalibrated, the approach taken in much constitutional scholarship remains underinclusive, as the role of executives, agencies, ad hoc commissions, and social actors in constructing the meaning of the constitutional text is often downplayed, or altogether overlooked. We argue that a pluralist perspective is necessary to fully appreciate the practice of constitutionalism in each jurisdiction and enable more informed analyses of the relationship between constitutions and law-making. Through a series of case studies, we further demonstrate that, while nonjudicial interpretation is an important practice in all countries, such a perspective could be particularly apposite in dominant-party states, as well as those favoring political constitutionalism, where courts are unlikely to position themselves as the principal, let alone exclusive, authority on what the constitution means. This article also explores the methodological implications in designing pluralistic constitutional interpretation studies, focusing on the questions that await investigation, the core variables at play, and the particular hazards in collating and assessing the materials that must be reckoned with.

This chapter examines the regulation of Islam in Singapore, noting its singular position in Singapore’s state-religion relations. While the constitution makes it the responsibility of the government to protect, safeguard, support, foster, or promote Islam and to administer Muslim personal laws and its religious affairs, the state’s accommodative measures have also given rise to certain anxieties for the Muslim community in Singapore. Islam is subject to greater regulatory control by virtue of its formalization and bureaucratization, while Muslims and Islamic activities are also subject to greater state scrutiny. Thus, the impact of such strong accommodation is far more ambivalent than may sometimes be assumed.