We have lost Ran Hirschl. A towering scholar. A beloved teacher. A friend to all. Ran lived a life of rare brilliance, courage, and generosity. A University Professor and the David R. Cameron Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Toronto, he transformed the study of comparative constitutionalism, democracy, and courts. His landmark books blazed the path for new fields of inquiry. He challenged settled assumptions. And he inspired scholars across the world.
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His impact stretches far beyond publications, prizes, or honors. Ran was a caring mentor, a selfless colleague, and a devoted teacher who enriched the lives of countless students. He brought to scholarship a searching mind, to friendship a loyal heart, and to family an abiding love. Even in his final days, he continued to grade, write, and give. His legacy endures in the disciplines he reshaped, the students he guided, and the many lives made deeper by his presence. He will be profoundly missed.
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I remember the first day I met Ran. It was September 2007. At the time, he was the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard University. I had just begun graduate studies there. I stopped by his office hours in Areeda Hall. I introduced myself, and we hit it off. From that day forward, he became a source of advice, encouragement, friendship, scholarly critique, inspiration, and more. He was one of a kind. I have accumulated a debt to him that can never be repaid for the support he gave me in ways both known and unknown to me.
*** Earlier this year in April, I shared with Ran that I had decided to dedicate my forthcoming book to him. I shared with him the proofs of the dedication page. He was touched. And I was grateful to have had the opportunity to honor him in this way, while he was still with us. May Ran rest in peace. And may Ran's loved ones – particularly his partner and wife, Ayelet Shachar, and their son, Shai – find comfort in their memories and remembrances of him.
Richard Albert
Call for Papers
My colleague Pedro Coutinho will host an international conference on “Constitutionalism, Identity and Sovereignty” at the Universidade do Minho in Portugal on October 7-8, 2026. The Call for Papers is available here. The Call is open to scholars, practitioners, and graduate students. The submission deadline is next month on June 30. Details here.
As has become the custom here at the Law School, graduates received symbolic sunflowers as they crossed the stage into the legal profession. The official record explains why the sunflower was chosen as the distinctive insignia worn at the graduation ceremony: “The sunflower, genus Helianthus, belongs to a family with worldwide distribution. So, also, do lawyers. And as the sunflower always keeps its face turned to the sun, the lawyer turns to the light of justice.”
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The video recording of the ceremony is posted below, as are a few photos of the day. Congratulations graduates!
At the Top of My Reading List
I am so looking forward to reading this new book by J.H. Snider, just published earlier this month: Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendums: Their Development Since America’s Founding. The book introduces, describes, evaluates, and catalogues the phenomenon of the periodic constitutional convention referendum in the United States, an innovative mechanism that authorizes the people to call a constitutional convention, whether or not the state legislature approves. Fourteen states have adopted this model across the Union. This model also has a distinguished lineage: it was recommended by Thomas Jefferson over two centuries ago.
*** I have long been curious about this form of popular participation in constitution-making. I have called it the hourglass model of constitutional reform in my recent article How Constitutions Die, published in the Florida Law Review.
*** I anticipate that I will learn a lot from this new book. My scan of the table of contents and appendices suggests that this book could become the best resource so far to understand this unique model of constitutional reform.
Constitutional Change in the Euro Crisis
In her new paper Informal Constitutional Change and the Rise of Fiscal Discipline in Europe (published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law), Maria Kotsoni offers a compelling analysis of the enduring legal and economic transformations catalyzed by the Euro crisis. Using a rigorous comparative framework focusing on Greece and Italy, Kotsoni shows that constitutionalized fiscal constraints – enacted through both explicit, formal amendments and subtle, informal structural shifts – continue to restrict state capacity to fulfill fundamental social rights.
A New Book on International Courts
In The Authority of International Courts: A Behavioural Framework (to be published later this week), Dana Burchardt offers a fresh and rigorously interdisciplinary lens for understanding how international courts actually wield – and risk losing – authority. Moving beyond formal jurisdiction and abstract questions of legitimacy, Burchardt develops a behavioural framework that foregrounds what judges, litigants, states, and the relevant publics actually do in response to international rulings. The result is a theoretically ambitious account that bridges international law, legal theory, and the social sciences.
New Prize in Constitutional Law
In my capacity as Chair of the AALS Section on Constitutional Law, I am pleased to invite nominations for the Inaugural Annual Prize in Scholarly Excellence. The Prize will be awarded annually to the author(s) of a scholarly article judged to have made the most meaningful contribution to the field of constitutional law. All untenured scholars at AALS Member Schools – including but not limited to tenure-track professors, visiting assistant professors, lecturers, and academic fellows – are eligible. The Prize will be awarded at the 2027 Annual Meeting of the AALS. Nominated scholarly articles must have been published between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026. Details are available here. Self-nominations are welcome!
The Roberts Court
In their new paper Autocratic Judging (published in the UCLA Law Review), Rebecca Brown and Lee Epstein offer a sobering empirical analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court under the chief justiceship of John Roberts. They argue that the Court has adopted moves directly from the autocrat's playbook: degrading election rules, aggrandizing itself at the expense of other branches, subverting minority rights, tolerating corruption, and sowing doctrinal chaos. Drawing on seventy years of data, they seek to demonstrate that the Roberts Court is uniquely unconstrained, lacking both the external check of a unified Congress and the internal moderating influence of a true median Justice. This is a provocative paper worth reading to evaluate the data for yourself.
Birthright Citizenship
The Institute for Governance & Civics at Florida State University has published a report on public opinion on birthright citizenship in the United States. The report finds that “public attitudes toward birthright citizenship have remained relatively stable overall—particularly since the mid-1990s—but have become increasingly divided along partisan lines.” The full report is available here.
In an outstanding new article Indigenous Constitutionalism (just published in the Harvard Law Review), W. Tanner Allread recovers a hidden constitutional tradition: the more than 230 tribal constitutions that have governed Indigenous nations for two centuries yet remain absent from standard accounts of American constitutional history. Tracing the tradition from the 1826 Choctaw Constitution through the Indian Reorganization Act era to the present, Allread shows that federal Indian law was co-created with tribal constitutions, not forged in isolation from them. The Article supplies long-overdue scaffolding for a tribal constitutional law framework and, in the process, expands our very conception of constitutionalism itself. I consider this paper to be essential reading for scholars of constitutions.
Constitutional Reform in Ireland
In a new paper on The Role and Value of Law Reform Institutions in Constitutional Referendums (forthcoming in the Dublin University Law Journal), Adam Elebert offers a compelling examination of the institutions that have shaped Irish constitutional referendums since 1966. Tracing a path from the Informal Committee through the Constitution Review Group, the 2012 Convention, Citizens' Assemblies, and the Housing Commission, Elebert shows that these bodies have delivered two distinguishable kinds of value: practical (driving reform) and intrinsic (fostering citizen deliberation). The central insight of the paper – that institutional design determines impact, while executive discretion ultimately constrains it – is both timely and significant.
Visiting on Campus
It was a pleasure to host Muslim Khassenov on campus for a discussion on constitutional law and politics in Kazakhstan. Currently a Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, he is an Associate Professor at Maqsut Narikbayev University in Astana. During our discussion, I learned about the history of constitutionalism in Kazakhstan, the design of the country's independence constitution, and the forces and dynamics that led to the adoption of the current constitution, enacted just a few weeks ago. At the end of our conversation, I encouraged Khassenov to consider writing a book on the Constitution of Kazakhstan for the Hart Series (my favorite series!) on the Constitutional Systems of the World.
Omnibus Legislation
In Omnibus Legislation: A Tool For and Against the Rule of Law in Developing and Established Democracies (published in the The Journal of Legislative Studies), Zsolt Szabó analyzes a quietly consequential lawmaking technique – bills bundling dozens or hundreds of unrelated amendments into a single vote. Drawing on case studies from Canada, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Turkey, and the United States, Szabó shows that omnibus laws cut two ways: in robust democracies they enable political bargaining and compromise, but in backsliding ones they become tools dominant executives use to bypass parliaments and erode the rule of law. He also introduces a useful amendability index to measure legislative instability.
Congratulations to Colleen Buck!
Congratulations to Colleen Buck, the newest graduate of the Law School here at the University of Texas at Austin! Before law school, Colleen built a successful career as a pilot. (Yes, she flew planes high into sky! Wow.) Colleen will now take flight on a new journey as a prosecutor at the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office. New Yorkers are getting a brilliant, creative, resourceful, tireless, and conscientious advocate for their rights. (My condolences to her future opposing counsel. I would not want to battle her in court!)
*** And thank you to Colleen for this special gift of a bobblehead. A little version of me, wearing a miniature version of my actual clothes. Hilarious!
The First Amendment in Japan?
The Japanese Constitution has never been amended since its adoption eighty years ago in 1946. But that may soon change. Earlier this month, the Commission on the Constitution in the Lower House began considering a draft of an “emergency clause” that could ultimately be incorporated into the Constitution. The proposed emergency clause would grant expanded authority to the Cabinet during major crises, for instance natural disasters, pandemics, or foreign armed attacks. In the event of an emergency that disrupts national elections, the amendment would allow the Cabinet – with prior parliamentary approval – to temporarily extend legislative terms in order to preserve the continuity of government.
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If this amendment proposal is formally introduced, it will not be easy to ratify it, as an amendment becomes official only with two-thirds approval in both houses of the bicameral legislature, a successful national referendum, and promulgation by the Emperor.
Constitutional Reform in the USVI
Last week, I traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands in my capacity as the Constitutional Advisor to the Constitutional Convention of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands Consortium has published an account of my meeting with the elected delegates of the Constitutional Convention. It is available here.
*** My trip went by fast. But I made time for a short jog (early in the mornings) on my 36-hour visit to this truly beautiful part of the world.
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