Tom Ginsburg

• JD, PhD
• Professor at University of Chicago

Utilizing a comprehensive panel dataset spanning from 1900 to 2020, this study introduces an innovative methodology for the analysis and categorization of legal documents, specifically national constitutions. Contrary to the predominant reliance on unsupervised methods within the field, this research incorporates a supervised machine-learning appro...

This volume of essays brings together a group of leading political scientists, legal scholars, and political theorists to describe and analyze the body of constitutional law and practice within and upon democratic institutions, in particular examining how constitutional law shapes electoral democracy. Constitutional law and practice on this questio...

In recent years, thousands of Buddhist monastics have marched in antiregime protests across South and Southeast Asia. Among the largest and most influential nonstate organizations in the region, monastic communities appear to be powerful agents for political change. Yet, like similar movements over the last half-century, recent monastic protests di...

National constitutions codify provisions on a wide range of topics, ranging from presidential term limits to the country’s flag. But are all constitutional provisions equally important? Some are likely to be particularly consequential for how governments function, while others are likely to be largely symbolic. To date, there has been little resear...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

In Germany and the United States, political factions have emerged in the last decade that have challenged some of the core institutions, conventions, and norms of liberal democratic life. In both countries, subnational units of government—states or municipalities—have operated as staging grounds for parties or factions of parties that reject some o...

This book collects a series of essays on international dispute settlement from a wide variety of perspectives. Work by scholars and practitioners explore the history, theory, law, and practice of international courts and tribunals and other means of peaceful resolution of disputes. The essays are written in honour of the late David D Caron, the lat...

There has been a crisis in the modal forms of liberal constitutionalism that emerged as a default design choices for political systems across Europe and North America in the wake of World War II. Central to the crisis have been institutionalized assaults on democratic institutions, often conducted with legal tools. This article reviews the extensiv...

There are many ways in which to examine the current Israeli constitutional crisis. This article uses the lens of anti-corruption, a global movement which has changed politics in many countries. The long empowerment of the legal system in Israel arguably has its origins in policing corruption, which may be a particularly powerful motivator for the c...

Recent decades have seen a sharp rise in constitutional provisions regulating core aspects of democracy, including the rules about parties, voting, and elections. The trend is apparent in both democracies and nondemocracies, although democracies tend to constitutionalize slightly more matters. Constitutionalization can help democracy by tying the h...

Chile’s experience with its Constitutional Convention from 2021 to 2022 sheds light on an important issue for comparative reflection: the role of procedures in constitution-making processes. The Constitutional Convention was bound by procedures that were both externally imposed and internally created. Our assessment is that, while some procedures i...

This chapter examines East and Southeast Asian monarchy in comparative perspective. Much recent thinking, particularly about contemporary monarchy, has developed from the history of European (and to a lesser extent African) monarchies. Indeed, European scholars have long contrasted the limited character of European kingship from the putatively more...

As international law has become more present in global policy-making, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has come to occupy an essential and increasingly visible role in international relations. This collection explores substantive developments within the ICJ and offers critical perspectives on its historical and contemporary role. It also ex...

This article explores the development of ideas in constitutional design. The point of departure is a perspective of constitutions-as-products, and thus, an examination of the invention, innovation, and an uptake of these products. The article conceptualizes constitutional innovation and distinguishes its manifestations with respect to constitutiona...

This volume, the first of its kind in the English language, examines the law and politics of federalism and decentralization in the Middle East and North Africa. Comprised of eleven case studies examining the experience across the region, together with essays by leading scholars providing comparative and theoretical perspectives and a synthetic con...

How does a democracy that has survived a close brush with authoritarianism start to recreate conditions of meaningful democratic political competition? What steps are to be taken, and in what order? Certain lessons can be gleaned from comparative experience with the challenges of “front-sliding”—that is, the process of rebuilding the necessary poli...

Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist...

This book grows out of the work of a study group convened by the American Branch of the International Law Association. That group had a mandate to examine threats to the rules-based international order and possible responses. The several chapters in the book generally support the conclusion that the rules-based international order confronts signifi...

Constitution-making is a major event in the life of a country, with constitutions often acting as a catalyst for social and political transformation. But what determines the visions, aspirations and compromises that go into a written constitution? In this unique volume, constitution makers from countries around the world come together to offer thei...

Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist...

Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist...

Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist...

Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist...

Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist...

review on: Andrew Harding, Munin Pongsapan (eds.), Thai Legal History: From Traditional to Modern Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021, 293 p., ISBN 978-1-108-83087-4

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is thought to have shaped constitutions profoundly since its adoption in 1948. The authors identify two empirical implications that should follow from such influence. First, UDHR content should be reflected in subsequent national constitutions. Second, such reflections should bear the particular mark...

In 1990, just out of college, I flew to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of the Mongolian People’s Republic. I was a young program officer for a nonprofit organization called the Asia Foundation, which worked to promote democracy around the region, and my job was to help a group of newly appointed constitution-makers in their task. My role was extremely pe...

In 1970, Thomas Franck asked a rhetorical question of enduring significance: Who Killed Article 2(4) ? The reference is to the provision of the United Nations Charter that requires all member states to refrain “from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Vladimir Putin's gambit in Ukrai...

With its emphasis on emerging and cutting-edge debates in the study of comparative constitutional law and politics, its suitability for both research and teaching use, and its distinguished and diverse cast of contributors, this handbook is a must-have for scholars and instructors alike. This versatile volume combines the depth and rigor of a schol...

Comparative law is undergoing a rapid evolution, particularly when compared to the descriptive methodology that characterized the field prior to the 1950s. Beginning around that time, comparative law scholars began to embrace more analytical approaches in their studies, and as a result drew novel conclusions about causes and consequences of legal r...

We explore the apparent disruption of legal scholarship wrought by leximetrics—variable-oriented, predictive methods. We view the skepticism surrounding leximetrics as healthy, in that it focuses attention on some central inferential challenges relevant to most empirical methods. Scholarly anxiety may be a natural by-product of this disruption, as...

The history of constitutional law in Latin America offers a mosaic of national histories, political experiments, and institutional transitions. No matter how distinctive and country-specific these histories and trends might be, this handbook shows that there are a set of commonalities that transcend the geographical contiguity of these countries. T...

For a North American looking at constitutions in Latin America, one recognizes certain broad similarities to the familiar image of constitutions and constitutionalism; thus, one can see the general shape of the phenomenon. But the particular features appear different, even distorted or inverted. On several dimensions, including stability, efficacy,...

Democracies and authoritarian regimes have different approaches to international law, grounded in their different forms of government. As the balance of power between democracies and non-democracies shifts, it will have consequences for international legal order. Human rights may face severe challenges in years ahead, but citizens of democratic cou...

Democracies and authoritarian regimes have different approaches to international law, grounded in their different forms of government. As the balance of power between democracies and non-democracies shifts, it will have consequences for international legal order. Human rights may face severe challenges in years ahead, but citizens of democratic cou...

Democracies and authoritarian regimes have different approaches to international law, grounded in their different forms of government. As the balance of power between democracies and non-democracies shifts, it will have consequences for international legal order. Human rights may face severe challenges in years ahead, but citizens of democratic cou...

Democracies and authoritarian regimes have different approaches to international law, grounded in their different forms of government. As the balance of power between democracies and non-democracies shifts, it will have consequences for international legal order. Human rights may face severe challenges in years ahead, but citizens of democratic cou...

Democracies and authoritarian regimes have different approaches to international law, grounded in their different forms of government. As the balance of power between democracies and non-democracies shifts, it will have consequences for international legal order. Human rights may face severe challenges in years ahead, but citizens of democratic cou...

Democracies and authoritarian regimes have different approaches to international law, grounded in their different forms of government. As the balance of power between democracies and non-democracies shifts, it will have consequences for international legal order. Human rights may face severe challenges in years ahead, but citizens of democratic cou...

The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law introduces students, scholars, and practitioners to the theory and history of the rule of law, one of the most frequently invoked-and least understood-ideas of legal and political thought and policy practice. It offers a comprehensive re-assessment by leading scholars of one of the world's most cherished t...

This chapter focuses on the abuse of international rights to political participation so as to facilitate a leader's remaining in office beyond the constitutionally mandated term. This involves not only the abuse of the interpretation of rights, but also the abuse of the doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendments, which has spread around...

Emergency governance, we are often told, is executive governance. Only the executive has the information, decisiveness, and speed to respond to crises, and so the executive is not capable of being effectively constrained by other branches. Ordinary checks and balances, then, are believed to effectively disappear during a crisis. Referring to the cl...

This article responds to a set of well-known challenges to empirical research on formal institutions in comparative politics. We focus on the case of written constitutions and discuss the scholarly utility of studying such documents in the face of four analytic and theoretical challenges. Each of these challenges, in turn, implies a set of empirica...

Ginsburg examines ethical questions surrounding World War II from the perspective of the Japanese. Endō’s 1958 novel explores an infamous incident in which Japanese doctors performed horrific experiments on captured American airmen. The doctors were later tried as part of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. As Ginsburg explains, Endō asks “the eternal q...

War often appears to be definitionally outside the realm of structures such as law and literature. When we speak of war, we often understand it as incapable of being rendered into rules or words. Lawyers struggle to fit the horrors of the battlefield, the torture chamber, or the makeshift hospital filled with wounded and dying civilians into the fr...

Roberto Gargarella siempre ha colocado la distribución del acceso al poder político y económico en el centro del análisis. Este artículo se centra en su argumento de que la participación podría mejorar la desigualdad material. Sostiene que la desigualdad puede ser enfrentada directa o indirectamente y que, a veces, la participación no es el mejor m...

This book is a compilation of twenty essays prepared for the occasion of the XIII Academic Conference of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Colombia, held in Bogota in January of 2019. Gathering some of the most prominent authors in constitutionalism and legal theory, the chapters critically examine classical debates. These debates concern...

To say that monarchy has received too little attention in the field of comparative constitutional law is to engage in understatement that even Queen Elizabeth might find excessive. In this useful volume, editors Robert Hazell and Bob Morris aimed to fill not just a gap in the literature, but a “gaping void” (at 3). Yet by their count there are fort...

This contribution takes as its starting point Professor Sadurski’s analysis of the Polish slide from democracy. Poland’s populists learned from Hungary, trying many of the same strategies as Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party. The lack of a constitutional majority meant that certain moves were open and others foreclosed, and Europe’s previous failures wit...

This volume is designed to mark the outstanding legacy of Professor Wojciech Sadurski’s scholarship in the field of comparative constitutional law. It provides a rich palette of chapters that aim to rethink the state of the art in this field, in light of the latest challenges to the foundations of liberal constitutionalism. Edited by former doctora...

Redrafting Constitutions in Democratic Regimes - edited by Gabriel L. Negretto September 2020

Cambridge Core - Constitutional and Administrative Law - Redrafting Constitutions in Democratic Regimes - edited by Gabriel L. Negretto

Our era is one of democratic backsliding. International courts and institutions have provided some bulwark against this trend, but we are now witnessing leaders seeking to use international law to extend their power. Courts in several countries have relied on international human rights norms to facilitate term limit extensions by leaders seeking to...

International law, though formally neutral among regime types, has mainly been a product of liberal democracies since World War II. In light of recent challenges to the liberal international order, this Article asks, what would international law look like in an increasingly authoritarian world? As compared with democratic countries, authoritarians...

Cambridge Core - Comparative Law - From Parchment to Practice - edited by Tom Ginsburg

Militant organizations and rebel groups are an enduring feature of political life in much of the world. As scholars pay greater attention to rebel governance strategies, the role of law and courts is coming to the fore. We observe a good deal of variation across rebel groups in terms of their legal infrastructure and its organizational differentiat...

For many, the growing judicialization of international relations is the next step in the process toward the complete legalization of international politics. We draw on the literature in comparative judicial politics to examine the limits of the phenomenon. The domestic literature on judicialization portrays the process as something of a one-way rat...

How has academia understood the massive changes in the world since 1989? This article emphasizes the important role of institutional analysis and empirical scholarship of various kinds. There has also been new attention to issues of identity. Finally, there have been monumental changes in the way scholarship is produced and consumed, and these too...

Our chapter elaborates the distribution of term limit provisions across time and space. We draw on the Comparative Constitutions Project, which records data from written constitutions for independent states since 1789. We show that term limits have become more common in presidential systems, and that there are regional variations to the patterns. W...

The constitutions of most liberal democracies contain provisions that constrain governmental action in relation to economic policy. Some provisions grant citizens rights: For example, Americans enjoy a right under the US constitution’s Contract Clause, prohibiting states from impairing the obligation of contracts. Most constitutions also provide in...

In the wake of the financial crises of 2008–09, liberal democracies passed a wave of constitutional amendments to require that revenues be brought in line with spending. Most notably, in 2012 the vast majority of the EU member states adopted the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (the “EU Fiscal Comp...

This framework introductory chapter to our book Constitution-Making and Transnational Legal Order (CUP 2019) addresses the transnational flow of ideas and institutions that shape how national constitutions are made. It examines the array of transnational influences, actors, and ideas that provide the very grammar for constitutional projects. The in...

This chapter considers a variety of constitutional options for resolving and managing enduring territorial cleavages. Three categories of constitutional tools are discussed: those that involve allocation of decision-making to different levels of government, including federalism, autonomy, and various forms of devolution; those that concern central...

Democracies can collapse or erode beyond repair, but they can also suffer substantial yet “non-fatal” deterioration in the quality of democratic institutions, and then experience a rebound. Such “near misses” have received little or no attention in the new wave of scholarship on why democracies die (or survive). This article develops the concept of...

Cambridge Core - Constitutional and Administrative Law - Constitutional Courts in Asia - edited by Albert H. Y. Chen

The field of comparative constitutional studies is an interdisciplinary inquiry that combines positive and normative analysis, and utilizes tools from several different academic disciplines including history, law, political economy, and sociology. The field reflects James Madison’s confidence that we can utilize the comparative method to produce ge...

Introduction to the Symposium on Thomas Franck, “Emerging Right to Democratic Governance” at 25 - Volume 112 - Tom Ginsburg