Tom Mulisa: Supranational and National Constitutions in Shaping Human Rights Jurisprudence: A Comparison of the East African Community and the European Union

Abstract

The study examines the institutional capacity of a supranational polity such as the East African Community (EAC) to impose a rights framework and culture on its member states. This study analyses the designs and contexts for supranational polities such as the EAC and the European Union (EU) with their institutional structures, namely courts and the role they would play in shaping a human rights jurisprudence. The study takes on a constitutional comparative approach. Specifically, it examines and compares theories and processes of European integration through courts with the East African Community experience. In case existing theories and mechanisms that established a supranational constitutional order for the EU do not sufficiently apply to the East African Community, it would call for the identification of mechanisms and processes that might be attributable to the supranational constitutional polity in East Africa. Since the study is under comparative constitutional law, it examines existing theories of constitutional supremacy and their relations with what the study calls a supranational constitution.