Professor Ran Hirschl, who holds a cross-appointment to the Faculty of Law, has been named a University Professor. The designation recognizes unusual scholarly achievement and pre-eminence in a particular field of knowledge.
Professor Hirschl received his PhD (Political Science) from Yale University in 1999. He began his academic career in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, as a Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Constitutionalism, Democracy and Development which supported his work from 2006 to 2016. He is currently the David R. Cameron Distinguished Professor in Law and Politics, studying Canadian and comparative public law. As of 2014, he is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) as “one of the world’s leading scholars of comparative constitutional law, courts and jurisprudence.”
Internationally regarded as a main intellectual pioneer of comparative constitutional studies—a distinctly cross-disciplinary area of inquiry that explores the dynamic interaction, mutual influence, and power relations between the constitutional domain and the political sphere within which it operates – Professor Hirschl has attracted over $7.5million in competitive research grants, including a Killam Fellowship and a coveted Alexander von Humboldt International Research Award—the most highly-endowed research award in Germany.
Professor Hirschl is the author of 150 articles and book chapters as well as four key monographs, each of which won a major book award: City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity (Oxford University Press, 2020) — 2021 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research (International Science Council (ISC) and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR); Comparative Matters: The Renaissance of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press, 2014) — 2015 American Political Science Association (APSA) Herman Pritchett Award for the best book on law and courts; Constitutional Theocracy (Harvard University Press, 2010) — 2011 Dennis Leslie Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory; Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2004) — winner of the 2021 Lasting Contribution Award from the American Political Science Association’s Law & Courts Section.
Professor Hirschl is the recipient of a University of Toronto teaching award and the APSA & Pi Sigma Alpha certificate for outstanding teaching in political science. He served as co-president of the International Society of Public Law, and held distinguished visiting professorships at Harvard, NYU, NUS, and the University of Texas at Austin as well as prestigious fellowships at Stanford University, Princeton University, and with the Max Planck Society. Hirschl is the co-editor of a Cambridge University Press book series on comparative constitutional law and policy. His work has been translated into various languages (including French, Dutch, Spanish, Turkish, Hebrew and Mandarin), cited by jurists and in high court decisions worldwide, and addressed in leading media: the CBC, New York Times, Folha de São Paulo, Le Figaro, Deutsche Welle, and the Jerusalem Post.
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