Last week, I attended a faculty roundtable discussion on Artificial Intelligence and the future of universities. The program began with remarks by Steven Mintz, a historian here at the University of Texas at Austin, and Meghan Sullivan, a philosopher at the University of Notre Dame. The former sounded the alarm on AI, while the latter struck a more optimistic chord. Their remarks were intended to prompt discussion among small groups of faculty seated at tables of 6 to 8. The mood at my table was largely skeptical about AI. Most expected more harm than good from the soon-to-come ubiquity of AI in professional life. One person worried about how to verify that a student's work was her own. Another was concerned about losing her faculty job to an AI agent who could teach courses at a fraction of the cost. Still another raised ethical questions about how AI would change the mission of universities.
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My own view is considerably more positive. I believe the future belongs to those who know how to harness the power of AI to improve the lives of others. That view has an important implication for university teaching. It means that it is the wrong move to blanket ban AI from the classroom and to prohibit its use in completing course work and assessments, absent good reason. I am currently giving deep thought to how to reorganize my syllabi and how to best use class time in light of the increasingly more competent, more rapid, and more accurate resources students have at their disposal with large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Co-Pilot, among others. If you have any advice that has proven successful in your own teaching, please share it with me! I would be very interested to learn from your experience.
Richard Albert
America at 250
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Yale University is making publicly available all lectures delivered in a jointly-taught course titled America at 250: A History. Three distinguished faculty have joined forces to lead students in a journey from the American Revolution to the present. I found this lecture by Joanne Freeman particularly captivating, as it explores the calculations and compromises that structured the process of drafting of the United States Constitution. An excellent lecture. All lectures are uploaded here as they are delivered.
ICON-S 2026
Join us in Dublin for the 2026 Annual Conference of the International Society of Public Law. The conference is a festival of action and ideas in all areas of public law – administrative, constitutional, international, and beyond. All are welcome, especially early-career scholars for whom this will be their first international academic experience. This amazing conference will run from June 29 to July 1, 2026, at University College Dublin in Ireland. All details are available here. I hope to see you there!
Freedom of Assembly
The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Assembly is now available to order. Edited by Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Michael Hamilton, Thomas Probert, and Sharath Srinivasan, this book describes and analyzes all dimensions of the fundamental right of assembly as a subject of study distinguishable from the freedoms of speech and association. Contributors range from anthropologists, historians, lawyers, political theorists, sociologists and more.
*** My friend Vicente Benitez explained to me the long process ahead:
“To convene a Constituent Assembly, first a statute must be passed by Congress. The statute basically sets the composition and scope of the Assembly, and includes the questions to be asked of the people. (In this case, the two questions would be whether the people agree with convening this Assembly and whether they authorize the Assembly to enact a new constitution with very few substantive limitations.) Once the statute is enacted, the Constitutional Court reviews it. If the Court approves the statute, the people are then called to vote on whether to convene the Assembly. If 30% of eligible voters say yes, the people then vote again to elect the delegates to the Assembly. After the members are elected, the Assembly begins its work with a view to ultimately enacting the new constitution.”
Unamendable Rules
Unamendable rules were once rare, but they are now increasingly common in modern constitutions. Brazil makes federalism unamendable, the Czech Republic makes democracy unamendable, France makes republicanism unamendable, and Turkey makes the national flag unamendable. These are only a few examples of unamendable rules in the constitutions of the world. The most well-known is the unamendable protection for human dignity in the German Basic Law.
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But does unamendability ever matter? In my new paper to be published in a book commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, I argue that unamendable rules matter only in rare circumstances. One of those arises where an unamendable rule is backed by an authoritative court of last resort that is both willing and able to enforce the unamendable rule against non-compliant actors. The book will be published next year. The full draft of the paper is available here. Comments are welcome!
The Origins of Constitutionalism
A new book by Kostas Chrysogonos, released earlier this month: The Rise of Constitutionalism, an ambitious study of the historical origins and global migration of codified constitutions – and of the powerful forces in law and politics that drive constitutional evolution beneath the text.
My sincere thanks and gratitude to Isfar Tehami for inviting me to speak with his excellent students earlier this month at Varendra University in Bangladesh. The topic of my lecture was constitutional unamendability. I distinguished codified unamendability from interpretive unamendability, and explained the various procedural and substantive justifications courts have historically given to invalidate a constitutional amendment.
A Primer on Political Parties
International IDEA has released its latest primer on constitution-building. This new primer focuses on political parties: what their constitutional roles and rights are in law and society, and whether and how constitutions recognize and regulate them. Co-authored by W. Elliot Bulmer and Sujit Choudhry, this primer will be of interest to constitutional scholars and of good use to constitution-makers.
Professors' Tea
I was touched when Folakemi Elekolusi invited me to attend the annual Professors' Tea last week, hosted by the Texas Orange Jackets, a service society founded over a century ago in 1923 here at the University of Texas at Austin. Every member of the Orange Jackets chooses one professor from the university to invite to the event. Fola was a student in my course on “Amending the U.S. Constitution,” in which she distinguished herself as a careful reader, persuasive speaker, and outstanding writer. I expect that we will see a lot of her in the news media, as an elected official, one day before too long.
Constitutional Design Seminar at Oxford
Oxford University will host an exciting seminar on constitution-making and constitutional negotiation at Pembroke and Trinity Colleges on August 3-14, 2026. Students will learn about deliberative democracy, multi-party negotiations, and constitutional design – and they will apply what they have learned to write a constitution in a simulated constitutional convention. The program offers scholarships for applicants with financial need. Details and registration here. I wish this program had been around when I was a student!
Symposium on US-Poland Relations
The Southern Illinois University Law Journal will host a symposium on the constitutional, international, and regional dimensions of the relationship between the United States and Poland. The Call for Papers is now available. Suggested topics include emergency powers, NATO obligations, sanctions and “economic warfare,” cybersecurity threats, military justice, and energy security. Submissions are open until January 19, 2026.
Visit to Coimbra
I am so grateful to Ana Raquel Gonçalves Moniz for inviting me to visit the Universidade de Coimbra, the 7th oldest university in the world, founded in 1290. I delivered the closing keynote address at Democracia: Futuros, passados e memórias por vir - a partir das Revoluções de 1383-1385 e 1974-76, a conference organized to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1975 Constituent Assembly that wrote the Constitution of Portugal. The title of my remarks was “From Revolution to the Rule of Law: Constituent Assemblies in 21st Century Constitution-Making.” While there, I toured the truly beautiful campus. I have shared some photos below, including of the botanical garden on the grounds of this great university.
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My sincere thanks to Ana Margarida Simões Gaudêncio and Luís Meneses do Vale for co-organizing this outstanding conference. It gave me the opportunity to learn about the modern constitutional history of Portugal and to meet many new people. I was especially pleased to see Wilson Seraine da Silva Neto, my long-time colleague at I-CONnect and now a doctoral candidate in law and economics at the University of Lisbon.
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And warmest and most enthusiastic thanks to my dear friend and Global Summit co-host Catarina Santos Botelho for traveling from Porto to greet me in Coimbra!
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