This important new collection looks at the challenges currently faced by UK constitutional law, with insights from history, sociology, political theory and philosophy.

What sort of methods are best suited to understanding constitutional doctrines and practices? Should we look to lawyers and legal methods alone, or should we draw upon other disciplines such as history, sociology, political theory, and moral philosophy? Should we study constitutions in isolation or in a comparative context? To what extent must constitutional methods be sensitive to empirical data about the functioning of legal practice? Can ideal theory aid our understanding of real constitutions?

This volume brings together constitutional experts from around the world to address these types of questions through topical events and challenges such as Brexit, administrative law reforms, and the increasing polarisations in law, politics, and constitutional scholarship. Importantly, it investigates the ways in which we can ensure that constitutional scholars do not talk past each other despite their persistent - and often fierce - disagreements. In so doing, it aims systematically to re-examine the methodology of constitutional theory.

A welcome contribution to the field of public law and legal theory. It is a rich and varied collection of essays that puts together a plurality of theories - from legal positivism to interpretivism and material constitutionalism - and methods - from empirical socio-legal studies to model-theoretic analysis. Such an impressive panoply of conceptual tools offered by so many distinguished experts was long needed.