And congratulations to the many contributors to Judicial Bricolage, in order of their chapters in the book: Elisa Arcioni, Jeffrey Gordon, Lise Brun, Antonin Vergnes, Cristina Fasone, Evelyne Asaala, Nicoletta Perlo, Faridah Jalil, Maartje de Visser, Christa Rautenbach, Aurela Anastasi, Stefan Martini, Peter Bußjäger, Tilen Štajnpihler Božic, Samo Bardutzki, Wen-Chen Chang, Shao-Man Lee, Manuellita Hermes, Cristián Villalonga, Johanna Fröhlich, Magdalena Correa Henao, Iván Otero Suárez, Daniela Salazar Marín, Roberto Eguiguren Calisto, Anna Gamper, Malkhaz Nakashidze, Zoltán Szente, Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz, Anna Maria Lecis Cocco Ortu, Anna Michalak, Ramona-Delia Popescu, Elena Simina Tanasescu, Soojin Kong, Fabian Duessel, Micol Ferrario, Anaïs Brucher, Marc Verdussen, Alexis Le Quinio, Akiko Ejima, Sergei Belov, Valentina Rita Scotti, Oya Boyar, Rachele Bizzari, and Angioletta Sperti.
*** Congratulations also to the editors of The Language of Comparative Constitutional Law: Questioning Hegemonies (Hart Publishing), the runner-up for the 2025 Book of the Year Prize: Erika Arban, Maartje De Visser,and Jeong-In Yun. They are joined by several contributors, as well: Masahiko Kinoshita, Francesco Biagi, Michael Goldhammer, Joel Colon-Rios, Graziella Romeo, Elisa Bertolini, Leonardo Pierdominici, Odile Ammann, Nomfundo Ramalekana, Vikram Narayam, Uday Vir Garg, Aziz Ismatov, Konrad Lachmayer, Ilker Gökhan Sen, Claudia Marchese, CJW Baaij, Francesco Palermo, Jaakko Husa, Giovanna Tieghi, Lucja Biel, Hanem El-Farahaty, Francesca Seracini, and Ngoc Son Bui.
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An Expert Council originally nominated 16 books for the Prize. Since January, there have been multiple rounds of voting to award the Prize, culminating in the Final Round of voting that ended on March 18, 2026. My sincere thanks to the members of the Expert Council, listed below, for selecting an outstanding list of nominees across multiple subjects in constitutional studies:
Antonia Baraggia | Italy Berihun Gebeye | Ethiopia Masahiko Kinoshita | Japan Virginie Kuoch | France Emilio Meyer | Brazil Jaime Olaiz-González | Mexico Marieta Safta | Romania
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Next year, the International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism will again award the Book of Year Prize. The Call for Nominations will open on or around December 1, 2026.
Richard Albert
Failed Amendment in Italy
Last week, Italians voted no in a referendum proposing a major constitutional reform to the judiciary. The result was 54 percent to 46 percent. The unsuccessful reform would have separated the career tracks for judges and prosecutors, and therefore prevented prosecutors from later becoming judges, and judges from later becoming prosecutors. One observer was concerned that this reform would have weakened the judiciary. This is yet another failed effort to amend the Italian Constitution, which has proved itself in recent years to be very difficult to amend.
Last week, the Institute for Governance and Civics at Florida State University hosted its first Student Constitutional Convention – an exciting and important event that offered students the opportunity to discuss, debate, and negotiate amendments to the U.S. Constitution. I delivered the opening address to the delegates. My remarks were titled How to Amend the U.S. Constitution. The other speakers were Kay Crews, Patricia Levesque, Sandy Levinson, and Morgan Marietta. Congratulations to everyone at the IGC, particularly to James Strickland, head of the Constitutional Liberty branch.
The Newest Doctor!
Congratulations to Atagün Mert Kejanlıoğlu, the latest in a long line of first-rate public law scholars to earn a doctoral degree from McGill University. His dissertation – titled Imagining “the People”: Towards a Democratic and Non-Populist Theory of Constituent Power – develops a democratic and non-populist theory of constituent power in response to the populist instrumentalization of the notion of “the people.” His supervisor was Johanne Poirier, and his examiners were Jeffrey Kennedy, Michael Pal, Colleen Sheppard, and Daniel Weinstock. In May 2026, he will begin a post-doctoral fellowship at the Université de Sherbrooke under the supervision of Dave Guénette. Congratulations to Atagün. Photos from his defense appear below.
Brazilian Law Exchange Program
The Universidade de Brasília (UnB) will host a three-week tuition-free learning experience for students interested in immersing themselves in the Brazilian legal system. Students will spend mornings taking classes at UnB on a variety of subjects in Brazilian law – from constitutional law to environmental law, from regulatory law to competition law, and beyond – and afternoons in an internship at the Supreme Court of Brazil (STF). This program will be conducted entirely in English. More details are available here.
Running with my Students
Earlier this month on International Women's Day, two of my students hosted a 5K race on campus here at the University of Texas at Austin to raise money for victims of domestic violence. My students – Genesis Britz and Veronica Sandoval – organized every aspect of the race, including medals, signage, and pace setters. It was a first-class event!
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I was happy to sponsor a team of my undergraduate students to run the race with me at a pace of 8:30/mile. My students chose our team name: Team Article 5, a reference to the main topic in my course on Amending the U.S. Constitution. Here some photos of our team, consisting of Rhys Carter, Josué Cedillo, and Brad Tientcheu. We were also joined by Alvaro Sanchez-Gallardo, a student at Texas A&M University visiting his friends here on campus.
European (Dis)Integration
In their new book titled The Eurosceptic Mobilisation of Constitutional Law, a professor of political science joins forces with a professor of law – Pablo Castillo-Ortiz and Giuseppe Martinico – to illustrate and explain that political actors use law to weaken the project of Europe. They show how the fiercest critics of Europe have deployed the mechanisms of law from within the European Union to challenge, undermine, and destabilize European integration from the inside.
AI and Constitution-Making
We have accepted an offer to publish our paper Should AI Write Your Constitution? with the Texas A&M Law Review! In the paper, Kevin Frazier and I combine our expertise as innovators in the use and design of Artificial Intelligence with our direct involvement as advisors in constitution-making efforts around the world to map the terrain of opportunities and hazards in using AI to write and reform constitutions. We explain how AI can be used in constitution-making, and also whether and how it should be used. The full-text of our paper is available here. Comments are welcome!
Democracy in Pakistan
I am looking forward to reading this book by Mariam Mufti, coming next month: Pathways to Power: Recruitment and Regime Instability in Pakistan. The book delves into the “persistent instability” that has befallen Pakistan, and traces the unsteady foundations of democracy to traditional practices and norms of elite selection and recruitment.
A Special Visitor
It was a joy to host Diego Moreno Rodríguez, a distinguished Judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in my seminar on constitutional reform here at the University of Texas at Austin. Judge Moreno, a Paraguayan lawyer and teacher, earned law degrees from the Universidad Católica de Asunción, Columbia University, and the Universidad de Salamanca. Judge Moreno is a long-time contributor to the International Review of Constitutional Reform (most recently, the 2023 edition) and he also wrote an excellent chapter on constitutional amendments in Paraguay in The Architecture of Constitutional Amendments (Hart Publishing). Judge Moreno spent a week here in Austin at the invitation of my colleague Ariel Dulitzky.
I have accepted an offer to publish my paper Is an Unamendable Constitution Undemocratic? with the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law! In the paper, I make the case that unamendability is not a technology worth encoding in any constitution. I draw from the results of a first-of-its-kind global survey of constitutional experts to show that unamendability takes a toll on both legality and legitimacy. My principal purpose is to steer constitution-makers away from designing constitutions that induce incumbents to follow the path of illegality when they feel handcuffed to an unamendable constitution. I offer detailed recommendations for designing constitutions to be always amendable, while simultaneously protecting the core of the constitution and its highest values. The full-text of the paper is available here. Comments are welcome, always!
Colleagues around the world have joined me on #Mission365. The newest member of the team is Pruthvirajsinh Zala, currently a master's student in law at the University of Cambridge. Thank you! Your participation gives me added motivation.
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This year I am on a mission to exercise every day of the year. (I missed three days last year.) 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.
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Please let me know if you, too, will take the challenge!
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