Abstract

The article investigates the structure of constitutional legal reasoning based on foreign law in a comparative perspective. A selection of judgments from different supreme and constitutional courts is analyzed for a more comprehensive understanding of how judges use materials from foreign homologous jurisdictions. This study illustrates two different models of legal reasoning based on foreign law are emerging globally: the hard mode and the soft mode. The hard mode tends to transform foreign legal materials into rules applicable to domestic legal systems. On the other hand, with the soft mode, once judges have targeted relevant foreign cases, they tend to consider the solutions not compatible with the national constitutional system. In this way, the soft mode transforms foreign judicial materials into examples or hypothetical solutions for the judicial cases under scrutiny. The article explores the advantages of this hermeneutic technique.