In Memoriam: Ran Hirschl (1963-2026)

To the ICON•S Community:

We are very sad to share that one of our most important founding members and former Co-Presidents, Ran Hirschl, has died.

Ran Hirschl was a dear friend, colleague, and mentor to many in ICON•S, including us. He shaped the field in a way few others did. He was one of the most important, impactful, and creative scholars of comparative legal studies. A true towering scholar and institutional leader in Public Law, he developed many of the concepts and ideas that have become ubiquitous in the field today, such as “juristocracy” and “comparative legal studies”; he expanded legal research into empirical and interdisciplinary avenues and explored novel themes, including constitutionalism and megacities. He educated generations of public law academics, many of whom are today influential and excellent scholars in their own right.

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, an association we have the pleasure to be a part of. He was also a much-valued advisor to the Society, serving on the Executive Committee, and a generous mentor to many of us.

We are honored to have met him and to have learned from him. We will miss him profoundly. We will make sure that his dream of ICON•S as a genuinely global, inclusive, and interdisciplinary association deepens. Ran consistently invited us to question conventional academic beliefs, an invitation that will continue to live and thrive within ICON•S.

Together with friends across the Society, we are developing ways to honor Ran appropriately, including at our annual conference in Dublin, and we will share details soon. In the meantime, we warmly invite members of the community to share their memories and reflections with us.
Our thoughts today are with his wife, Ayelet Shachar, and his family.

Michaela Hailbronner and Sergio Verdugo
Co-Presidents of ICON•S