This course is designed to enable students to understand the rights contained in the Bill of Rights by adopting a comparative approach to explore the jurisprudence of constitutional rights. The course uses four jurisdictions, the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa to compare how these different constitutional systems protect and interpret the rights enshrined in their constitutions and law. While all four jurisdictions are rooted in the common law legal tradition and share a history of colonial settlement and English public law, their respective approaches to the protection and interpretation of specific rights provides a unique opportunity to explore the idea and practice
of constitutional rights and to see how similar rights may be understood and shaped depending on the different historical, social and institutional contexts
in which they are recognized.