Tom Ginsburg - Why do countries need constitutions?

Tom Ginsburg is a Professor of International Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is primarily known as a scholar of international and comparative law, with a focus on constitutions. He holds BA, JD, and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is Democracies and International Law (2021), winner of two best book prizes, and his prior books include How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018), written with Aziz Z. Huq, which won the best book award from the International Society of Constitutional Law; Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association; The Endurance of National Constitutions (with Zachary Elkins and James Melton, 2009), which also won a best book prize from APSA; and Judicial Reputation (with Nuno Garoupa, 2015). 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-US Claims Tribunal and The Hague (Netherlands), and continues to work with numerous international development agencies and foreign governments on legal and constitutional reform. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-host of the Entitled podcast on human rights.