日本において立憲主義が成立した由来およびその後の発展の経緯について、憲法典の内容、判例・実務を含む法制度及び学説の変遷をたどりながら明らかにする。
著者が、海外の学術書、学術雑誌に発表してきた論文をもとに、全編英語でまとめる。長谷部憲法学の集大成がここにある。
Foreword

Part I Sovereignty
　Chapter 1 Why We Should Not Take Sovereignty Too Seriously
　Chapter 2 On the Dispensability of the Concept of Constituent Power
　Chapter 3 Constitutional Revolution, Legal Positivism, and Constituent Power
　Chapter 4 Images of the Market: Is the Competitive De-Regulation Inescapable?

Part II Constitutional Borrowing
　Chapter 5 Constitutional Borrowing and Political Theory
　Chapter 6 Constitutional Borrowing: The Case of the Monarchical Principle
　Chapter 7 Montesquieu’s Significance for Contemporary Japan: What Japanese Constitutional Scholars Have Failed to Learn from Montesquieu
　Chapter 8 Kant’s Rechtsstaat and Its Reception in Japan
　Chapter 9 Book Review: Making We the People: Democratic Constitutional Founding in Postwar Japan and South Korea
　Chapter 10 Constitutional Changes in Japan

Part III War and Emergency Powers
　Chapter 11 War Powers
　Chapter 12 The End of Constitutional Pacifism?
　Chapter 13 Should the Japanese Government Be Granted Emergency Powers?

Part IV The Judiciary and Constitutional Reasoning
　Chapter 14 The Supreme Court of Japan: A Judicial Court, Not Necessarily a Constitutional Court
　Chapter 15 The Supreme Court of Japan: One Step Forward (But Only Discreetly)
　Chapter 16 Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing
　Chapter 17 Regulation of Telecommunication
　Chapter 18 Judges’ Conscience and Constitutional Reasoning
　Chapter 19 The Rule of Law and Its Predicament

　Afterword: What is the Constitutional Identity of Japan?

　Index