When Americans vote in two weeks, they will cast their ballot for electors who will in turn cast ballots of their own for President of the United States. The President will therefore be selected in an indirect vote. This system, known as the Electoral College, has both supporters and detractors. As the National Conference of State Legislatures has explained, “for some, the Electoral College is an essential legacy of the founders’ vision. For others, it’s a relic enabling a tyranny of the minority.” Richard Posner, for instance, has identified five reasons for keeping the Electoral College. There are of course counterarguments (and more counterarguments). One of the most striking counterarguments comes from Miguel Schor, who has argued that the Electoral College “is facilitating the election of a demagogue to the presidency of the United States.” In recent years, Americans have increasingly turned against the Electoral College. A poll conducted a few weeks ago shows that 63% of Americans would prefer to elect the President in a national popular vote. Of course, reform will not come easily, since the U.S. Constitution is arguably the world's most difficult to amend. What is more, the most popular sub-constitutional reform proposal – the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact – may be unconstitutional, not to mention that it raises practical difficulties. It is highly likely, then, that America will keep the choosing its President via the Electoral College for many years to come, for better or worse.

A new book by Núria González Campañá on secession within EU Member States: Secession and European Union Law. Observing that secession remains a live issue in the region, the book suggests that the EU's response has historically been too narrowly shaped by political considerations. The author proposes a broader approach informed by principles of the rule of law rooted in a pluralist reading of the interaction between EU law and national law.

We welcome expressions of interest to join the team of the 2024 International Review of Constitutional Reform, to be published in the second half of 2025. Details and invitation here.

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Published annually since 2020, the IRCR gathers reports on constitutional reform efforts in countries around the world. Each report explains and contextualizes events in constitutional reform over the previous year in a given jurisdiction. Constitutional reform is defined broadly to include constitutional amendment, constitutional dismemberment, constitutional mutation, constitutional replacement, and other acts in relation to constitutional reform, including the enactment of a new constitution and the judicial review of constitutional amendments.  

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Earlier editions of the IRCR are available here:

This week, Oxford University Press will release The Oxford Handbook of American Election Law, a collection of essays on every legal aspect of elections in the United States. Edited by Eugene Mazo, the book contains chapters from roughly 50 of the leading thinkers in the field. And it appears at just the right time, with Election Day around the corner. 

Ngoc Son Bui will publish his third book this week: Legal Reform in the Contemporary Socialist World, a comparative study of legal reform from the late 1970s to the present in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. This book builds on his second, which examined Constitutional Change in the Contemporary Socialist World.

Registration for the 2025 Global Summit on Constitutionalism closes on November 4, 2024. The Global Summit is an international conference showcasing all areas of constitutionalism, held here at the University of Texas at Austin on March 20-22, 2025. There is no cost to register. The first edition was held in 2021. The second in 2023. The 2025 Global Summit will be the third. All are welcome! Details and registration here.

It has been a joy to work with Alexandra Flynn and Nathalie Des Rosiers to edit a pair of new books, published just last week. 

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Cities and the Constitution | This book confronts the misalignment between the importance of municipalities and their constitutional status. While city governments are at the forefront of mitigating the challenges of urban life, they are given insufficient power to effectively attend to public needs. Thank you to our contributors, in order of their chapters: Zack Taylor, Mary Janigan, Benoît Frate, David Robitaille, Jack M. Little, Iulia Anescu, Maartje De Visser, Emmanuelle Richez, Emmett Macfarlane, Hoi L. Kong, Erin Crandall, and Kristin R. Good. 

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The Past, Present, and Future of Canadian Cities | This book examines how pre-Confederation cities came to have their current constitutional and legislative forms; how current local governments make decisions within existing legal parameters, highlighting Indigenous-municipal relationships and emergency management; and, finally, looks to the world to investigate future innovation in municipal governance. Thank you to our contributors, in order of their chapters: Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin, Almos Tassonyi, Mary Eberts, Stéphane Émard-Chabot, William B. Henderson, Jordan Samaroo, Joanne Heritz, Anneke Smit, Miguel Calmon Dantas, Marina Costa Esteves Coutinho, Amal Sethi, Konrad Lachmayer, Patricia Popelier, Erika Arban, and Patricia Burke Wood.

Congratulations to Nausica Palazzo, the founding director of the NOVA Centre for the Study of Gender, Family, and the Law, launched just last month at an event featuring remarks by Ana Maria Guerra Martins, Judge of the European Court of Human Rights. The mission of this new hub is to engage in interdisciplinary research and policy development in relation to gender, equality, and family law. 

In her new book Press Freedom & Regulation in a Digital Era – published just last month – Irini Katsirea shines comparative light on the freedom of the press, with a focus on Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in addition to cases from the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The book “examines the key implications of digitalization and assesses the challenges for press freedom in the nascent digital news ecosystem” and “makes concrete and timely recommendations for the evolving online news ecosystem.”

Last week, Andrea Katz spoke with students in my course on Constitutional Amendments in the U.S. and the World about the democratic costs of informal constitutional change in the United States. My students and I enjoyed our discussion on the importance of popular ownership of the constitution, both in perception and reality. A small group of students then joined us for a meal at True Food Kitchen. It was a fun visit!

I traveled to Lima at the invitation of Heber Joel Campos Bernal, my generous host at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, to participate in an international conference on Democratic Erosion and Threats to Fundamental Rights in the Americas. I spoke about the evolving uses and misuses of the amendment power, drawing in part from my forthcoming paper on Decolonial Constitutionalism. Here are a few photos from my trip to Peru, including one memorializing my souvenir exchange with Abraham Siles, the Head of the Constitutional Law Department, as well as some photos I took during my morning jog near the University campus.