Interest in comparative constitutional law has historically come in waves, typically triggered by dramatic examples of constitution-making – in the aftermath of the Second World War, in the era of decolonization and in the third wave of democratization that began with the displacement of Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and continued through the breakdown of the Soviet Union and its satellites in Central and Eastern Europe (Fontana 2011).1 During each wave a persistent set of issues arises about the boundaries of the field: How is it related to the study of comparative politics, for example, or what is its relation to normative theories of liberal constitutionalism?