Prof. Ran Hirschl

Ran Hirschl (PhD, Yale) is the newly appointed Alexander von Humboldt Professor in Comparative Constitutionalism at the University of Göttingen, having been granted a coveted AvH International Research Award (the most highly-endowed research award in Germany) by the Humboldt Foundation. From 2006 to 2016 he held the Canada Research Chair in Constitutionalism, Democracy and Development at the University of Toronto, where he has been Professor of Political Science & Law since 1999. In 2014, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC)—the highest academic accolade in that country. The official citation describes him as “one of the world’s leading scholars of comparative constitutionalism.”

Professor Hirschl is the author of Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2004 & 2007); Constitutional Theocracy (Harvard University Press, 2010)—winner of the 2011 Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory; Comparative Matters: The Renaissance of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press, 2014)—winner of the 2015 APSA Pritchett award for the best book on law and courts; as well as over 100 articles and book chapters on comparative constitutionalism and judicial review, constitutional law and religion, the judicialization of politics and the methodologies of comparative constitutional inquiry published in major social science journals (e.g. Comparative Politics, Political Theory, Journal of Political Philosophy, Law & Social Inquiry, Constellations, Revue Française de Science Politique, Annual Review of Political Science), public law journals (e.g. International Journal of Constitutional Law, American Journal of Comparative Law, Human Rights Quarterly, Chicago Law Review, Harvard International Law Journal), and leading edited collections (e.g. Oxford Handbook of Political Science).

Professor Hirschl has been a Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a Fulbright Fellow at Yale, and a Fellow at Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Affairs. He served as distinguished visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, USC Faculty of Law, and NYU Law School. In 2010, he delivered the Annual Lecture in Law and Society at Oxford University. In 2012, Professor Hirschl was awarded a Killam Research Fellowship—one of Canada’s most prestigious research awards—by the Canada Council for the Arts. He is an editorial board member of several leading journals, co-editor of a book series on comparative constitutional law and policy published by Cambridge University Press, and the co-president (2015-2018) of the International Society of Public Law. His work on comparative constitutionalism and judicial review has been translated into various languages, discussed in numerous scholarly fora, cited in high court decisions, and addressed in media venues from the New York Times to the Jerusalem Post.