The 2007 Stanford Law Review Symposium, "Global Constitutionalism," examines the interplay between the constitutional jurisprudence and principles of the United States and other nations. The articles presented in this Issue focus on global influences on U.S. jurisprudence, the creation of constitutions, and national security and constitutional protections. These themes were further explored at the live Symposium, co-hosted by the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, which was held at Stanford Law School on February 16 and 17, 2007. [...]

Writing against the subjugation of women in 1869, John Stuart Mill wrote that "laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad."1 You cannot justify an institution on the basis that good men will not abuse it. So too with times: laws and institutions need to be adapted not to good times, but to bad. It may be relatively easy to agree on what the laws should be in times of ease and peace—in the good times. When the times are bad, it is more difficult.
And we have had since 9/11 plenty of bad times. [...]

As globalization runs its course, the domestic world is becoming full of international law. One of the mechanisms by which international law penetrates domestic law is largely unproblematic: our own political actors—Congress and the President through statutes, or the Senate and President through treaties— can incorporate international law into the domestic legal order. But international law now may enter into the domestic sphere in more controversial ways. First, some Supreme Court Justices have suggested that the Court should use international law as a source for construing the U.S. [...]

The proper role of international law in domestic constitutional adjudication is a hot issue in legal circles and beyond, particularly in light of attacks on an "activist" judiciary, presently the fad among pundits, politicians, and pulpitarians. While the contest has been simmering for years in Congress, on the Court, and among academics, the top blew off the pot during the 2003 and 2004 Supreme Court terms "[w]hen [Justice] Kennedy, who's hardly a liberal, started citing these international sources . . . [and] the subject exploded in the broader political world." [...]

In two of the most controversial cases of the past decade, the Supreme Court relied on foreign law to help determine the meaning of the United States Constitution. These foreign citations caused quite a stir. Several Justices have spoken extrajudicially about whether such reliance on foreign law is proper, and Justices Scalia and Breyer even went so far as to debate the issue outside of court. Congress has held hearings and considered resolutions and bills disapproving the practice. And scholars, of course, have let their views be known as well. [...]

Some people think that the practices of many courts in many countries, or in many relevant countries, offer helpful guidance to courts in other countries, when those courts are approaching hard or novel questions. In their view, the practices of many courts create a body of law in which other courts should be highly interested. The obvious question is: Why? [...]

We Iraqis are a people plagued by massacres, random killing, bombs, and fiery statements—all targeting the democratic and constitutional processes. According to my appraisal, the reason behind this is that we are swimming against the current of a backward region, which still lives in the era of early centuries where people are governed not by democracy and constitutions but by single families, parties, or individuals. We experience the crisis of our political reality in the nonexistence of democratic constitutions and elected regimes. [...]

British tradition and the American Constitution guarantee trial by jury for serious crime. But terrorism is not ordinary crime, and the presence of jurors may skew the manner in which terrorist trials unfold in at least three significant ways.
First, organized terrorist groups may deliberately threaten jury members so the accused escapes penalty. The more ingrained the terrorist organization in the fabric of society, the greater the degree of social control exerted under the ongoing threat of violence...

Though they often skirt the legal perimeter, the Bush Administration's national security policies are undoubtedly creative. The Administration's inventiveness demands a similar agility from the lawyers challenging these policies, particularly since the federal courts are understandably reluctant to interfere with the Executive in the midst of an armed conflict. While procedural arguments based on the separation of powers have met with some success in the courts, new legislation resulting from new Administration strategies requires a fresh approach. [...]