Ran Hirschl

Overview

Ran Hirschl (PhD, Yale) is University Professor, the David R. Cameron Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Law, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His research interests focus on comparative public law, and in particular the intersection of comparative politics and comparative constitutionalism. He is the author of four books: City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity (Oxford University Press, 2020)—winner of the 2021 Stein Rokkan Prize in Comparative Social Science Research; Comparative Matters: The Renaissance of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press, 2014 & 2016)—winner of the 2015 APSA C. Herman Pritchett Award for the best book on law & courts; Constitutional Theocracy (Harvard University Press, 2010)—winner of the 2011 Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory; and Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2004 & 2007)—winner of the 2021 APSA Law & Courts Section Lasting Contribution Award, as well as over one hundred articles and book chapters on comparative constitutionalism and judicial review, public law, the judicialization of politics, constitutional law and religion, and the intellectual history of comparative constitutional inquiry published in scholarly venues such as Comparative Politics, Law & Social Inquiry, Political Theory, Human Rights Quarterly, Constellations, Annual Review of Political Science, the Oxford Handbook of Law & Politics, the Journal of Political Philosophy, Annual Review of Law & Social Science, Revue Francaise de Science Politique, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Harvard International Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and the American Journal of Comparative Law.

Professor Hirschl has been a Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Maimonides Fellow at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice (NYU), 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 the National University of Singapore (NUS), Harvard Law School and NYU Law School. From 2006 to 2016 he held the Tier I Canada Research Chair in Constitutionalism, Democracy and Development. In 2010, he received a University of Toronto award for outstanding teaching, and delivered the Annual Lecture in Law and Society at Oxford University. In 2012, he was awarded a Killam Research Fellowship—one of Canada’s most prestigious research awards—by the Canada Council for the Arts, and delivered the Annual Julius Stone Address at the University of Sydney. From 2015 to 2018, he served as co-president of the International Society of Public Law, and has been an editorial board member of several leading journals, as well as the co-editor of a book series on comparative constitutional law and policy published by Cambridge University Press. In 2016, he was awarded a prestigious five-year Alexander von Humboldt International Research Award, hosted by the University of Göttingen. In 2018, he was granted a three-year Max Planck Fellow award in comparative constitutionalism. From 2021 to 2023, he served as Professor of Government and the Earl E. Sheffield Regents Professor of Law at the University of Texas, Austin. His work on the intersection of public law and comparative politics has been translated into various languages, discussed in numerous scholarly fora, cited in high court decisions (inclusing the Supreme Court of Canada), and addressed in leading media venues from the CBC, New York Times and Folha de São Paulo to Le Figaro, Deutsche Welle, and the Jerusalem Post.