Straus Fellow

Maimonides Fellow

Academic Year 2011-2012

Ran HirschlRan Hirschl

Ran Hirschl is Professor of Political Science and Law, and holds a senior Canada Research Chair in Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2004 & 2007), and Constitutional Theocracy (Harvard University Press, 2010), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on comparative constitutional law and politics and the study of comparative legal traditions and institutions more generally. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford), a Fulbright Scholar, and a Fellow at Princeton University's Program in Law and Public Affairs. Most recently, he served as the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, received a University of Toronto Outstanding Teaching Award, and delivered the 2010 Annual Lecture in Law and Society at Oxford University. For a full biography and list of publications, please visit: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty/hirschl

Research

Comparative Constitutional Law and Religion: New Directions

My current research lies at the intersection of two broad trends: the astounding global convergence to constitutionalism and the return of religion to the forefront of world politics. At the Straus Institute, I plan to continue my engagement with new thinking in what was once called “Church and State” matters in both infrequently-traveled constitutional destinations alongside some more familiar ones. In particular, I am interested in the evolving role of constitutional law and courts as key secularizing agents in religion-laden settings, judicial politics and jurisdictional clashes between civil courts and religious tribunals, the use of rights discourse alongside sacred precepts in public reasoning, and the formation of hybrids of constitutional and religious norms in non-secular settings, primarily in the areas of personal status law, freedom of conscious, bioethics, and economic law.

A related area I plan to focus on is the political economy of purportedly principled interpretive rifts in constitutional law and religion law, why doctrinal debates in the two domains erupt, and how they evolve. To that end, I will look at a variety of charged contexts, from interpretive ingenuity in Second Temple Judaism to intra-religion splits and inter-religion collaboration throughout history, and to debates in contemporary constitutional law concerning the use of comparative sources, "originalism" versus "purposive" interpretation, and the rise of proportionality analysis.

At the more abstract level, exploring the tensions and similarities between  constitutional law and religion law may suggest that constitutionalism and religion often fail to get along well with each other not because they are so different – in many respects they no doubt are – but because they are so similar, each with its own constitutive texts, elevated moral aspirations, interpretive institutions, and at times, less-than-reverend interests. Moreover, precisely because constitutionalism may be seen as a religion-like domain, a civic faith fostered by the modern state and the international community, it is distinctly better positioned than blunter, more forceful means, to effectively diffuse, mutate, co-opt, or mitigate principles of theocratic governance.