Ran Hirschl, Professor of Political Science & Law, University of Toronto

Ran Hirschl is Professor of Political Science & Law at the University of Toronto. As of 2016, he holds the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship in Comparative Constitutionalism, having been granted a coveted AvH International Research Award (the most highly-endowed research award in Germany) by the Humboldt Foundation. From 2006 to 2016 he held the Canada Research Chair in Constitutionalism, Democracy and Development at the University of Toronto. In 2014, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC)—the highest academic accolade in that country. The official citation describes him as "one of the world's leading scholars of comparative constitutional law, courts and jurisprudence."

Winner of the 2021 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research

"...Hirschl deserves much praise in bringing to the fore a topic that should not have stayed in the shadows for so long. City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity raises tough questions and forces us to confront them head-on. This is a field-defining book—the results of which are already evident within the short period since this book's launch (and even before)." - Amal Sethi, Publius: The Journal of Federalism

"After a series of important books, Ran Hirschl has turned his attention to the constitutional status of cities. In City, State, he reveals a resounding constitutional 'silence' as to the status of cities in the old constitutional systems of Europe and North America and a contrasting level of focus and innovation in the Global South. Hirschl persuasively argues that the constitutional empowerment of cities holds promise for the great social problems of our day including representational fairness, socio-economic inequality and climate change. Delving deep into the fundamentals of the field, City, State challenges orthodox assumptions of constitutionalism and lays out new, rich veins of inquiry that will be influential for decades to come." - Adrienne Stone, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

"Transformative scholarship from the master of scholarly transformations and seminal studies. Ran Hirschl details how the state and provincial borders that structure constitutional law fail to capture the urban-rural divide that structures much constitutional politics, a divide Hirschl demonstrates that in regime after regime disempowers and impoverishes the places where the vast majority of the world's population lives." - Mark A. Graber, Regents Professor, University of Maryland Carey School of Law

"Even though global cities have grown dramatically in size and importance, most constitutions - and hence legals scholars - have paid almost no attention to them. Hirschl's impressive, timely, and wide-ranging book fills a large hole in the literature. It explains why the economic strength of cities has so often been accompanied by weakness in the constitutional order, and then explores conditions under which urban residents have been able to carve out some constitutional autonomy, especially in developing countries. This book will be of great interest to legal scholars, social scientists, and urbanists." - Jonathan Rodden, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research