The Puzzling Parameters of the Foreign Law Debate

This Article has discussed the use of foreign law for purposes of constitutional interpretation as part of the process of awakening of the American legal mind to the reality of a larger constitutional world. To this encounter, American constitutional thought comes rather ill-prepared. This is not only a conclusion about the limited potential of the foreign law debate, but also a more general statement about the contemporary American constitutional discourse. Regardless whether or not the canon of constitutional interpretation should be extended to include foreign sotrrces, it is striking how unwelcoming the terms of the foreign law debate are for engaging with the issues that an encounter of this magnitude raises.