I am proud to call Ashley Moran and Zach Elkins my colleagues here at the University of Texas at Austin. One of many reasons why is their innovative fellowship program that immerses undergraduate and graduate students in the vital work of democratic development around the world. Students in their Embedded Scholars Program are offered opportunities to work with International IDEA in Latin America and the National Democratic Institute in Eurasia. If you would like to support Ashley and Zach's program, to partner with them to create new fellowship placements in your organization, or just to learn more about their work, please contact either of them. They would be pleased to hear from you – and you would be helping to strengthen democracy at a time when help is urgently needed.

Higher education is under pressure around the world. But there are some bright spots. In her State of the Nation address last week, Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah announced that higher education at public universities would be free starting next year. This is an historic announcement that comes on the heels of her inauguration last month as the country's first female president. Namibia now joins at least 22 other countries in offering higher education for free. 

Congratulations to Mark Graber on winning the Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for the 2025-26 academic year. He will spend the year working on his next book Making the Thirteenth Amendment's Constitution Work. It is hard to think of a scholar more deserving of this prestigious award in constitutional studies. Congrats! 

Masahiko Kinoshita is the chief editor of the leading casebook on Japanese Constitutional Law. It is available in two volumes, one covering constitutional governance and the other focused on constitutional rights. He is presently at work on an English-language book on the Supreme Court of Japan.

Last month, Leyla Susana Lemus Arriaga was sworn in as the new Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of Guatemala. A graduate of Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and Universidad Mariano Gálvez, she has held many roles in government, including in the office of the former President of the Republic, Alejandro Giammattei. Her swearing-in ceremony was held in the Palace of Justice. A video recording is available here.

This new and important book by Jean-François Gaudreault-Desbiens and Léa Boutrouille intervenes at a critical moment in the life of universities. Academic freedom is, in a word, precarious. In Libertés expressives dans l’université canadienne contemporaine, the authors offer a robust defense of free expression, making a strong case for more nuance, context, and deliberation in how we communicate in campus settings.

I was pleased last week host a Mexican delegation here at the University of Texas at Austin. The purpose of our meeting was to strengthen the relationship between the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the University of Texas at Austin. The delegation included the Honorable Humberto Hernández-Haddad, Consul General of Mexico, William Lee Alardín, Vice Provost for International Affairs at UNAM, Paula De Gortari, Director of UNAM San Antonio, and Jorge Madrazo, former Attorney General of Mexico, who kindly arranged our meeting. Stay tuned for updates about new collaborations between UNAM and UT!

Congratulations to Margaret Woo and Remco van Rhee on their new book Comparative Civil Procedure. This superb collection of essays – written by some of the most influential scholars in comparative civil procedure and edited by two of the best in the field – exposes the deep fault lines and foundational similarities in dispute resolution across borders. It is an essential resource to understand the basic building blocks for a fair and just society.

I have completed a draft of my chapter titled Amending the Constitution of Brazil: A View from Abroad, coming soon in The Oxford Handbook on the Constitution of Brazil, edited by Juliana Cesario Alvim Gomes, Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, and Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer. Comments are welcome!

Meet Netta Barak-Corren, a Professor of Law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in empirical constitutional law. She is currently working on an ERC-funded project that develops a comprehensive empirical approach to constitutional law, utilizing diverse methodologies including big data analysis, field experiments, interviews, and historical research to elucidate the application of constitutional doctrines to issues ranging from constitutional design to human rights.

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I'm currently writing about designing constituent assemblies for polarized democracies. The past decade has been challenging for democracies in general and for constitution-making in particular. The paper emphasizes comparative insights drawn from both successful and failed constitution-making efforts globally, and proposes a multi-prong methodology of adapting these insights to particular political settings to enhance effective constitutional drafting.

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Next, I'm exploring how empirical evidence is strategically employed in legislative hearings, focusing on U.S. Congressional committees. This research utilizes recent advances in large language models to investigate how minority parties use empirical discourse as a tool to influence policy when lacking formal power, and how such dynamics shape legislative outcomes across different areas of law and policy. 

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How can we measure the consequences of constitutional decisions? Constitutional Consequences, recently published in the New York University Law Review, investigates this question in the context of religious exemptions from equality laws. It demonstrates how judicial decisions on religious exemptions can reshape constitutional norms, social equality, and legal consequences in practice, and proposes lessons for courts, litigators, and legislators.

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Editor's Note: If you would like to nominate someone for a future edition of “Three Questions,” please let me know!

 

César Landa, formerly President of the Constitutional Court of Peru, has published Constitutional Questions in Latin America and Peru, a study of constitutional rights in Latin America, with a focus on Peru. The book explores how Peru interprets rights both old and new, including digital rights, environmental rights, minority rights, and social rights.

My course on Amending the U.S. Constitution has now come to an end for this term. During a semester of 14 weeks, 70 students and I discussed every aspect of Article V of the Constitution of the United States. Topics included the design of Article V at the Philadelphia Convention, its interpretation by courts, its use over the past 230+ years, and alternative methods of reform drawn from the constitutional experience of U.S. states and countries abroad. These 70 students are now the newest experts on Article V!