Editorial
In this issue
We begin this issue with an In Memoriam appreciation of the lifeof our distinguished founding Advisory Board member, Ran Hirschl, who passed away on May 19, 2026, at the age of 62. This issue of I•CON is dedicated to his memory.
Our Articles section opens with a contribution by Manal Totry-Jubran and David Kretzmer, who examine the exercise of constituent power in parliamentary systems through the lens of Israel’s legal system. Against the backdrop of recent democratic backsliding and the judicial overhaul controversy, the authors analyze the risks that arise when constituent and legislative authority are concentrated in the same institution. They propose a framework of procedurally constrained constituent power—grounded in temporal distance, broad political consensus, and judicial oversight—as a means of preserving constitutional legitimacy.
Kai Möller revisits Ronald Dworkin’s late theory of rights by focusing on its conceptions of liberty and personal responsibility. While identifying important philosophical limitations in Dworkin’s account, the article argues that, from a constitutional perspective, his theory offers a convincing alternative to proportionality-based rights adjudication by preserving a meaningful sphere of individual liberty that contemporary rights doctrine often fails to secure.
The environmental dimension of constitutionalism is the subject of Andreas Buser’s contribution. Building on recent developments in climate litigation and Earth-system science, Buser develops the concept of “planetary constitutionalism” and asks whether constitutional law can establish legal limits corresponding to planetary boundaries. Focusing on German constitutional doctrine while engaging broader comparative debates, the article assesses both the promise and the limits of constitutional law in responding to ecological crises extending beyond climate change.
The article by Legesse Tigabu Mengie then turns to the distinctive Ethiopian model of non-judicial constitutional review. Examining Ethiopia’s experience through the lens of constitutionalism and the rule of law, the article evaluates whether constitutional review entrusted to a political rather than judicial body can provide a coherent and viable alternative to more familiar systems of constitutional adjudication. Drawing on three decades of constitutional practice, Mengie concludes that the Ethiopian model ultimately fails to provide an effective mechanism for safeguarding constitutional supremacy.
The section continues with M. Victoria Kristan’s normative inquiry into global democracy and the legitimacy of the international order. Starting from the premise that genuine freedom requires not only representative domestic institutions but also a legitimate global system, the article explores the moral permissibility of international interventions aimed at transforming non-representative states into democratic ones. Drawing on republican political theory, Kristan distinguishes between dominating and non-dominating forms of intervention and argues that only the latter can contribute to the development of a genuinely democratic international order.
Pranoto Iskandar offers an exploration of hukum tata negara, Indonesia’s equivalent of constitutional law, in his contribution. Challenging the assumption that it is simply a translation of Western constitutional law, Iskandar argues that the concept is best understood as a vernacular constitutionalism grounded in Indonesia’s distinctive folk religious sensibilities and social imaginaries. The article thus offers both a reinterpretation of Indonesian constitutional thought and a broader contribution to comparative legal theory.
Lorraine Wu examines the phenomenon of interim constitutions through an empirical study of forty-one constitutions adopted between 1990 and January 2025. Identifying four principal functions that interim constitutions perform in constitution-making processes—procedural frameworks, training wheels, first drafts, and last resorts—the article develops a typology of constitutions based on their temporality. It distinguishes between interim, permanent, failed, and accidental constitutions, and reflects on the implications of the unexpected endurance of interim constitutional arrangements for the design of future constitution-making processes.
The Articles section concludes with Stephen Gardbaum’s contribution, which makes the case for plural executives in the age of strongmen. As executive dominance and chief executive aggrandizement increasingly threaten democracy and the rule of law across diverse constitutional systems, Gardbaum argues that plural executive arrangements provide a more effective institutional response, offering a better balance among the four core values of democratic governance: stability, effectiveness, accountability, and representativeness.
The I•CON Debate! section features an article by Armin Steinbach on European public goods. Drawing on fiscal federalism theory, Steinbach examines the criteria for determining which public goods should be provided at the EU level and argues that the relevant question is not whether provision should occur at the national or European level, but how institutional arrangements can best be designed to maximize the benefits of different public goods across the Union. In response, Marco Goldoni situates Steinbach’s argument within broader debates on European integration, subsidiarity, and constitutional law. While engaging with Steinbach’s institutional framework, Goldoni questions the limits of an economic understanding of public goods and offers an alternative perspective informed by law and political economy.
GR
In this issue—Book reviews
This issue features five book reviews, which engage with a wide range of constitutional themes across diverse jurisdictions, including postliberal constitutionalism in Central and Eastern Europe, transitional justice, LGBTQ+ rights, local self-government in Southeast Asia, and the future of constitutionalism.
In his review of Postliberal Constitutionalism: The Challenge of Right-Wing Populism in Central and Eastern Europe, Rafał Mańko examines the book’s distanced stance toward right-wing populism and illiberal constitutionalism in Europe. Uladzislau Belavusau reviews Constitutionalizing Transitional Justice: How Constitutions and Constitutional Courts Deal with Past Atrocity, suggesting that the question of whether constitutionalizing transitional justice enhances legitimacy, fosters reconciliation, or entrenches division admits of no singular answer. In his review of Courts and LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment, Stefano Osella underscores that understanding the politics of LGBTQ+ rights in an era of constitutional degradation requires attention to considerations beyond judicial strategy alone. Bryan Dennis Tiojanco, in his review of Territorial Governance in Southeast Asia, challenges optimistic assumptions regarding the prospects for local governance and draws attention to the constitutional role of dominium. Finally, Rosalind Dixon‘s review of Constitutionalism 2050: Planetary Challenges, Statist Thinking argues that the mismatch identified by Ran Hirschl may lead states to place greater emphasis on burden-sharing and leveraging.
CCL
In memoriam Ran Hirschl
1. Remembering Ran Hirschl
Ran Hirschl was a dear friend, colleague, and mentor to many of us in the global public law community. A member of the I•CON Board of Editors, a former ICON•S Co-President, and a member of the Society’s Executive Committee (among other roles), Ran was one of the most important, impactful, and creative scholars in comparative legal studies, and a true scholarly and institutional leader in public and comparative law. We will miss him deeply.
He developed many of the concepts and ideas that have become ubiquitous in the field today, expanded legal research into empirical and interdisciplinary avenues, and explored novel themes. He educated generations of public law academics, many of whom are today influential and excellent scholars in their own right and active members of this community.
As a former ICON•S Co-President, Ran expanded the Society’s reach beyond Europe and North America, transforming it into a broader global association.
We are honored to have met him and to have learned from him. Several lessons from Ran will stay with us. A few examples suffice: Ran invited us to bring together the project of comparative politics and the social sciences within comparative public law. He invited us to make more ambitious, even empirical, claims, using the most rigorous methods available. Ran encouraged us to question conventional academic beliefs and to refine the project of comparative law in ways that are transparent and mindful of its limitations, without abandoning the need to make important claims. He always pushed for a more horizontal, merit-based academic system and was particularly keen on helping early-career researchers. Ran was also not naïve about how to share and promote his ideas, and he invited us, by example, not to be shy about our own projects and to be proud of what we do.
We will make sure that ICON•S and I•CON continue to pass on and encourage these lessons and the others he taught us.
2. The ICON•S Award for Leadership in Global Public Law
At the recent ICON•S Annual Conference in Dublin, at which Ran would have normally participated so actively, we made an announcement about the creation of a new ICON•S Award for Leadership in Global Public Law, and awarded it (posthumously) for the first time to Ran Hirschl.
The award is intended to recognize the outstanding career of a public law scholar. It honors the impact that an excellent scholar has had on academia, both in institution-building and in making an important contribution to a relevant transnational public law field, all in line with the values of ICON•S.
The aim is to recognize true leaders for their work throughout their careers, including their contributions to mentoring younger scholars and to shaping the field’s methodologies. Recipients will be scholars who have helped to create or challenge academic consensus on relevant research questions, changed the scholarly debate on a significant issue, and strengthened a transnational public law dialogue that is inclusive, sophisticated, and consistent with the best academic practices.
The award, given by the Society’s Executive Committee, aims to be recognized as a leading distinction in public law scholarship. It won’t be awarded every year; it is meant to be awarded only on a truly exceptional basis, when a strong candidate fits the description above, at the discretion of the executive committee.
Ran sets the bar, and it is a high bar.
He wrote many works that changed academic conversations in public law. Two of his books suffice to show this:
First, the book Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism, prompted us to question the causes of judicial empowerment from an empirical perspective. By uncovering the political origins of judicial empowerment, the book reframed the worldwide normative debate through the critical lens of elites’ “hegemonic preservation.” It did so by championing methods that combine comparative politics with comparative constitutional law and that make empirical findings useful for normative debates.
Second, his book Comparative Matters: The Renaissance of Comparative Constitutional Law situates the tradition of comparative constitutional law within a wider historical and methodologically rich perspective. The monograph changed not only how we refer to our discipline today (comparative constitutional studies) but also how we “do” public law scholarship. The book has become both an important introduction to our field and a necessary toolkit for doing comparative law and selecting cases.
Comparative law has traditionally been considered a difficult field to engage with seriously and rigorously. Doing legal studies with empirical methods is also challenging. Both empirical legal studies and comparative law research are fields in which academic consensus is scarce and methodological pluralism abounds.
Perhaps one of Ran’s most important contributions to those fields is finding ways to make them easier and more rigorous. And this alone has a significant impact on the possibilities for research.
Ran gave this field some of its sharpest questions and some of its best methods. It is fitting that the first scholar to receive this award should be one of the people who made the award worth giving.
3. The painting
During the ceremony, a painting honoring Ran was presented. What follows is an abbreviated and adapted version of the explanation provided by the artist, Putachad Leyland. An image of the painting appears below.
At the pinnacle is the figure of Ran. His name is etched in Hebrew. The portrait is above the dynamic and imposing representation of the “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” by Boccioni. The image evokes the dynamism of Ran’s intellect.
In the background, soaring skyscrapers are set at an angle. The edifices remind us of Ran’s landmark work, City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity.
There are references to some of his scholarly contributions: to the left is a reference to the “Hegemonic Preservation in Action” The EU flag also appears. To the right, “Towards Juristocracy,” connected to four countries represented by national emblems: Canada (red maple leaf), Israel (Star of David), South Africa (national flag), and New Zealand (national flag).
His idea of “Hegemonic Preservation In Action” is reproduced as a visual analogue of a flowering plant sprouting from an egg. A hand grasping a set square refers to the act of academic writing. A deconstructed classical temple reminds us of the role of law and constitutional and supreme courts.
A stream of citizens striding purposefully with the word “Rights” reminds us of the place that human rights protections had in many of Ran’s works.
Ran Hirschl: Dynamic Intellectual Thinker
Putachad Leyland. © The artist (2026). Reproduced with kind permission by the artist.
4.
Professor Ayelet Shachar, herself a leading voice in our field, received the award on Ran’s behalf in Dublin. We are grateful to her for honoring us with her presence and for allowing this community to celebrate Ran’s life and work with her. We will miss him.
Sergio Verdugo
Co-President of ICON•S[1]
[1] This Editorial adapts remarks delivered at the ICON•S 2026 Annual Conference in Dublin on 29 June 2026.