Voting is now open for the 2025 Book of the Year! The Prize is awarded by the International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism to the author of the most important book in constitutional studies published last year.
***
An Expert Council has nominated 16 books for the Prize. My sincere thanks to its members, identified below, for working hard over the past month to create such an outstanding list of nominees.
Antonia Baraggia | Italy Berihun Gebeye | Ethiopia Masahiko Kinoshita | Japan Virginie Kuoch | France Emilio Meyer | Brazil Jaime Olaiz-González | Mexico Marieta Safta | Romania
***
You are invited to vote in multiple rounds over the next few weeks. Voting will culminate in the announcement of the Book of the Year on March 23, 2026. You are welcome to vote now in the First Round!
Richard Albert
Supreme Court “Feeder” Judges
The most prestigious legal credential in the United States is a Supreme Court clerkship. These positions typically last for a single year and are ordinarily filled by recent law school graduates. Supreme Court clerks have usually served for at least one year in a similar position with a lower court judge. A recent study examines who those judges are.
***
These judges are described as “feeder” judges because they create a pipeline from their own chambers directly to the Supreme Court. Ambitious law students therefore seek to serve as clerks to these feeder judges, hopeful that they might then clerk on the Supreme Court. The data show that the top feeder judge is J. Harvie Wilkinson, that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is the top feeder court, and that most feeder judges earned their law degree from Yale, Harvard, or Stanford. These and other interesting data are summarized below. The full study is available here.
***
Admirers of the great Guido Calabresi (including his former law students, like me) will appreciate that he ranks 8th on the list of feeder judges.
Netta Barak-Corren has launched EmpiriCon, a multi-year research project to study the role of empirical evidence in constitutional studies, with a focus on processes of constitutional decision-making. The dearth of empirical analysis in constitutional studies “generates unpersuasive decisions; brings about inadvertent societal consequences; breeds accusations that constitutional decisions are subjective and biased; and lets unvalidated facts influence and manipulate decisions in the absence of proper procedural safeguards.” EmpiriCon is an ambitious and worthwhile effort to fill this void. Learn more about EmpiriCon here.
Congratulations to the 16 nominees selected by the Expert Council. First Round voting is now open here until February 4, 2026.
Turkish Constitutional History
Today, Routledge has published Constitutional Law and Politics in Türkiye: From Atatürk to Erdoğan, a new book by Valentina Rita Scotti. The book traces and contextualizes the constitutional history of Türkiye, beginning in the Ottoman Empire through the present day. The Turkish Constitution has always been important in the region and beyond. This book explains why.
UAEU Law Journal
I am delighted to join the editorial board of the UAEU Law Journal, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by the College of Law at the United Arab Emirates University since 1987. The journal publishes three issues per year, each in open access. Submissions are welcome in Arabic, English, and French. If you are interested in publishing in the UAEU Law Journal, I would be pleased to hear from you. My sincere thanks to the editorial leadership of the Journal, in particular to Karem Aboelazm, for inviting me to join the board of this leading journal for legal scholarship in the Arab world.
In a few months, the University of Wisconsin Press will publish Constitutions and the Dialectics of Human Rights in Malawi and Kenya, an inquiry into the success and failure of promoting human rights in these two African states. In her book, Eunice Sahlechallenges readers to reconsider who has the responsibility to advance and enforce human rights.
Congratulations!
Wonderful news for our dear colleague in the field of comparative constitutionalism: Stefanus Hendrianto, a leading scholar of Indonesian constitutional law, will profess his final vows in the Society of Jesus next week on Monday, February 2, 2026. Details are available here.
***
February will be a happy month for our colleague for another reason: his latest book, titled Democracy and the Rule of Law in Indonesia, will be published. Intellectually daring and morally resonant, this magnificent book combines historical depth, philosophical rigor, and comparative sophistication to trace Indonesia’s constitutional destiny. Hendrianto’s multidisciplinary lens reveals Indonesia as a laboratory of democratic possibility—where republican ideals, democratic aspirations, and legal realities intersect. This is scholarship of the highest order: rigorous, humane, and transformative.
***
You may send your congratulations here: stefanushendrianto@creighton.edu.
Last year I exercised on 362 days of the year. I was disappointed to miss those three days. This year, I am on a mission to exercise every day of the year, wherever I am in the world. I have been posting a daily photo of my exercise routine on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, and on my website. Public accountability keeps me striving for my goal. ***
The mission of the International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism is to marshal knowledge and experience to build a world of opportunity, liberty, and dignity for all.
727 East Dean Keeton Street Austin, TX 78705, United States
