• Research Professor
750 N. Lake Shore Drive
4th Floor
Chicago, IL 60611
Joint Appointment
Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law and Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
Education
Ph.D., Jurisprudence and Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley
J.D., University of California, Berkeley School of Law
B.A., Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Tom Ginsburg

  • Research Professor
ABF Researcher

Tom Ginsburg is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Political Science Department. He currently codirects the Comparative Constitutions Project, a National Science Foundation–⁠funded data set cataloging the world’s constitutions since 1789.

His latest book is Democracies and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Earlier books include Judicial Review in New Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2003), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association; The Endurance of National Constitutions (Cambridge University Press, 2009), which also won a best book prize from APSA; Judicial Reputation (The University of Chicago Press, 2015); and How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2018), with coauthor Aziz Z. Huq, winner of the best book prize from the International Society for Constitutional Law. He has edited or coedited twenty-five other books.

He has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo, Kyushu University, Seoul National University, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Trento. Before teaching, he served as a legal advisor at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he has consulted with numerous international development agencies and governments on legal and constitutional reform.

Research Focus

The drafting, design, and implementation of national constitutions; legal reform in Northeast Asia; and comparative notions of judicial independence.