Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, working on comparative and international law from an interdisciplinary perspective. He is the founding Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Forum on Free Inquiry and Expression.

His latest monograph is Democracies and International Law, winner of the best book prize from the American Branch of the International Law Association and the Robert A Dalton award from the American Society for International Law. His prior books include How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018), with Aziz Z. Huq, which won the best book prize from the International Society for Constitutional Law (ICON-S); Judicial Reputation (2014), with Nuno Garoupa; The Endurance of National Constitutions (2009), with Zachary Elkins and Janes Melton, which won a best book prize from the American Political Science Association (APSA); and Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from APSA. In 2022, this book was honored with the Lasting Contribution Award from the Law and Courts Section of APSA. He has also edited or co-edited over 25 books.

At the University of Chicago, he directs the Malyi Center on Institutional and Legal Integrity. He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an effort funded by the National Science Foundation to gather and analyze the constitutions of all independent nation-states since 1789. Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal adviser at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he continues to work with numerous international development agencies and foreign governments on legal and constitutional reform. He is Senior Advisor on Constitution-Building to International IDEA. 

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He co-edits the ICONnect Blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law, produces the Entitled podcast, and is on numerous other academic editorial boards. 

View Professor Ginsburg’s CV.