The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Law: The Philosophical Origins and Differences Between the Western Liberal and Soviet Communist State Law

This article will examine the philosophical notions of a constitution and a state system from a historical perspective. It will highlight the different philosophical bases of state law and the purpose the constitution is meant to serve under the two divergent orders. The approach will be descriptive and comparative. The purpose of this work is not (in the words of Christopher Osakwe) to pass off a political opinion about the desirability of one or the other legal systems.

Instead, the essential focus will be to examine the jurisprudence underlying the constitutional systems, and the different uses that constitutions perform in the two orders. In a sense, the study proceeds from a level of abstraction.