📍 Professor of World Constitutions @UTAustin 📜 Advisor to Governments and Parliaments 🌏 Former President of @ICON__S 🎓 Alum @Yale @Harvard @UniofOxford
Joined April 2009
- Tweets2.7K
- Following155
- Followers25.9K
- Likes4.8K
🎉 A fun dinner at Sweetgreen @sweetgreen with four outstanding students in my course on "Constitutional Amendments in the U.S. and the World" here at the University of Texas at Austin @UTAustin @UTexasLaw @UTGovernment @UTexasGlobal.
1. Catalina Finkielman Brama is a second-year J.D. student with an interest in European law.
2. Krishna Kangatharan is an exchange student in our J.D. Program. He joins us from Australia.
3. Juan Carlos Morales Barbosa is a master's student in our LL.M. Program. He joins us from Mexico.
4. Karthika Nambiar is a second-year J.D. student with an academic background in anthropology.
🤩 An amazing group!
🤩 Class today in my course on Constitutional Amendments in the U.S. and the World here at the University of Texas at Austin.
📜 Our topic is how to design a constitutional amendment procedure.
📑 Some key readings include:
1. Xenophon Contiades & Alkmene Fotiadou, Models of Constitutional Change, in Engineering Constitutional Change: A Comparative Perspective on Europe, Canada and the USA (Xenophon Contiades ed., 2013)
2. Jon Elster, Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints (2000)
3. Jan-Erik Lane, Constitutions and Political Theory (2d ed. 2011)
4. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy (2d ed. 2010)
5. Donald S. Lutz, Principles of Constitutional Design (2006)
6. Dawn Oliver & Carlo Fusaro, Changing Constitutions: Comparative Analysis, in How Constitutions Change: A Comparative Study (Dawn Oliver & Carlo Fusaro eds., 2011)
7. Bjørn Erik Rasch & Roger D. Congleton, Amendment Procedures and Constitutional Stability, in Democratic Constitutional Design and Public Policy (Roger D. Congleton & Birgitta Swedenborg eds., 2006).
8. Edward Schneier, Crafting Constitutional Democracies: The Politics of Institutional Design (2006)
📜 Writing the Foreword for "Constitutional Legitimacy and Presidential Term Limits," a new book coming soon from Alexandre Freitas Couto, a recent doctoral graduate of the Universidade de Brasília.
🎉 The book asks a provocative question: can it ever be legitimate for presidents to evade term limits?
🤩 This outstanding book will be published in the Routledge Series on Comparative Constitutional Change!
📝 Editing my paper "Is an Unamendable Constitution Undemocratic?," coming soon in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, with thanks to its outstanding editorial leadership.
📜 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 there are costs to legality and legitimacy when incumbents exploit the mechanisms of law to overcome an unamendable constitution.
🔑 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: (1) protecting the core of the constitution and its highest values; (2) achieving the expressive benefits of unamendability; and (3) respecting the rule of law.
📰 Read an earlier draft here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…
👩🏽🎓🧑🏿🎓👨🎓 The Top 10 Universities for the quality of student life.
🏆 #1 is the University of Texas at Austin @UTAustin. Each is a great place to be a student.
📝 All details here: niche.com/colleges/search/be…
🎉 In his new book provocatively titled "Secession," Kent Greenfield @Kentgreenfield1 does what few constitutional scholars have dared: to make a serious, carefully reasoned case for breaking up the United States. And he does so with rigor, courage, and a constitutional lawyer’s eye for detail.
🚫 My own view: I do not agree that secession is the remedy for what ails the United States. I believe the Union should endure forever and all time. BUT this new book has jumped to the top of my shortlist for book of the year.
🌟 Greenfield's diagnosis of the constitutional dysfunction in America is bracing, his blueprint for peaceful separation is meticulous, and his challenge to complacency is one every citizen should confront for themselves. Even skeptics like me will finish this brilliant book wiser than we began.
📝 Learn more about this important book here -- and get your copy soon: harpercollins.com/products/s…
🤩 Class today in my course on Constitutional Amendments in the U.S. and the World here at the University of Texas at Austin.
🎉 Our guest is Catarina Santos Botelho @CSantosBotelho, Chair of Constitutional Law at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa @catolicaporto.
📜 Our topic is a fascinating puzzle: how (and whether) to amend unamendable rules.
📑 Some key readings include:
1. Catarina Santos Botelho, "Constitutional Narcissism on the Couch of Psychoanalysis: Constitutional Unamendability in Portugal and Spain," 21 European Journal of Law Reform 346 (2019)
2. Jónatas E.M. Machado, "The Portuguese Constitution of 1976: Half-Life and Decay," in Engineering Constitutional Change (Xenophon Contiades ed., 2012)
3. Peter Suber, The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Logic, Law, Omnipotence, and Change (1990)
🌟 All are welcome to the best and biggest annual conference in public law!
🌏 The International Society of Public Law @ICON__S has released the Call for Papers and Panels for the highly-anticipated 2027 gathering in Taiwan, to be hosted by Academia Sinica @AcadSinica on June 30 to July 2.
📝 All details are here: icon-society.org/call-for-su…
🎉 Join us!
🤩 Class today in my course on "Constitutional Amendments in the U.S. and the World" here at the University of Texas at Austin.
📜 Our topic is unamendability.
📑 Some key readings include:
1. Silvia Suteu, Eternity Clauses in Democratic Constitutionalism (2021)
2. Yaniv Roznai, Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments (2017)
📜 The 9th Annual Constitutional Law Scholars Forum is now accepting submissions. Hosted and organized by Professor Eang Ly Ngov, the conference will be held at Barry University on February 19, 2027.
📝 Details and registration here: sites.google.com/view/consti…
