This article examines the much debated controversy concerning citations by
the U.S. Supreme Court to foreign authorities in the course of deciding constitutional
issues from the perspective of comparative constitutional law. This
examination is set against the three dominant views in the field, respectively that
constitutions address similar issues and that they ought to reach similar results,
that they address the same issues but that they ought to reach different results
given relevant differences among national and constitutional identities, and that
comparativism is mainly ideological, and for the most part steeped in Western
biases. Analyzing the U.S. jurisprudence on unenumerated rights and that concerning
the rights of homosexuals, in particular, which are highly controversial
even in the absence of the foreign citation controversy, the article concludes that
the whole controversy over citations to foreign authorities is but a sideshow to
the main ideological wars over the proper limits of constitutional interpretation.
In the course of this analysis, the article explores the scope and limitations of
legitimate comparative constutional work.