I am pleased to announce that the Executive Board of the Section of Comparative Law in the Association of American Law Schools has accepted my recommendation--in my capacity as the elected Chair of the Section--to create an annual award named after Mark Tushnet, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard University.

I was privileged to be Mark's student many years ago at Harvard Law School. I saw then as I see now how closely he reads the work of others, how intensely engaged he is in the field of public law, and how much of himself he invests in his students. 

More details on the award are available here.

Today I begin my term as Chair of the Comparative Law Section in the Association of American Law Schools. As Chair, I will lead a group of 800 members in advancing and deepening our learning in the field.

The task of the Chair is to plan and execute the program for our annual meeting, to be held next year on January 2-5, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Later this month, I will consult with our Executive Committee about possible themes for our program.

But I will do more than this during my term as Chair. I will create an annual prize to be awarded to a younger scholar in recognition of excellence in comparative law scholarship. I intend also to host a works-in-progress conference here at the University of Texas at Austin to give scholars in comparative law an opportunity to brainstorm and improve their ongoing research and writing. 

I welcome suggestions for other productive initiatives we can take during my term as Chair.

--​Richard Albert

I am writing from Vancouver, British Columbia, where I am participating in a symposium to recognize the judicial career of Beverley McLachlin, recently retired as Chief Justice of Canada, a position she held from 2000 until the end of 2017. 

Chief Justice McLachlin hired me to serve as her law clerk when I graduated from Yale Law School. It was a privilege unlike any other to return home to Ottawa to work with her. 

This weekend's symposium at the University of British Columbia offered me the opportunity to reflect on her legacy as Chief Justice. I wrote a paper entitled "The Expositor and Guardian of Our Constitutional Values," which has been published in a special collection of essays recognizing the Chief's immense contributions to Canada. The paper is available here.

--​Richard Albert

Earlier this year, I organized a modest fundraiser to sponsor the education of one Haitian child in need of our help. I asked friends to give $10 each. By the time the fundraiser had ended, we had raised much more money than I had expected--enough to send not one, but six kids in Haiti to school, each for three years! 

Together we have literally transformed the lives of these six children. They are now enrolled in school, learning to read, to count and to write, all the while delighting in the pleasure of paints, puzzles and instruments. You can see them pictured below. From left to right in the top row: Islande, 9 years old, 4th grade; Mildred, 9, 4th grade; Ludmia, 9, 4th grade. From left to right, bottom row: Clifford, 8, 3rd grade; Taicha, 9, 4th grade; Julia, 11, 4th grade. 

Thank you to all who contributed to this effort. I thank also the Marco Depestre Foundation of Ottawa for helping us to identify families in need of our care. 

It is truly remarkable what we can do together. 

--Richard Albert

I have no illusions about my importance in the field of public law. I am a (relatively!) young person of colo(u)r in a field that has long been and remains today dominated by people who do not look like me. 

But thanks to the good fortune of caring mentors and extraordinary opportunities, I now occupy a gatekeeper role in a few areas in the field. Given my own background, it is clear to me that one of my duties as a gatekeeper in the small universe where I exercise some influence is to help persons from historically underrepresented groups through the gate. Helping includes advising, encouraging, and promoting persons from these groups. 

Here are some of the places where I have helped and will continue to help in public law:

1. As co-editor of the new Oxford Series in Comparative Constitutionalism and the Routledge Series in Comparative Constitutional Change, I advise scholars about how to package and develop their ideas. I also help as a member of the board of the ASCL Studies in Comparative Law series at Cambridge. Please contact me if you have ideas for books.

2. As book reviews editor at the American Journal of Comparative Law, I highlight outstanding books that have not received much attention, whether because their authors are not well-known or because they are not particularly adept at or interested in self-promotion. Please contact me if you have a book that we should consider for review, or if you would like to review a book you think is worth highlighting for the field.

3. As co-editor at I-CONnect, I give a platform to scholars to explore interesting ideas, advance novel arguments, review books, and bring attention to views that may be unconventional or not yet widely disseminated.  Please contact me if you would like to join the conversation at I-CONnect.

I hope other gatekeepers in the field of public law will join me in helping persons from historically underrepresented groups through the gate.

--Richard Albert

I spent last week in Aegina, a Greek island about 40 minutes southwest of Athens. I traveled to this part of the world to participate in a workshop on comparative constitutional change. I presented a draft of my chapter on Formal Amendment Rules: Functions and Design, to be published in the forthcoming Research Handbook on Comparative Constitutional Change. In the chapter, I explain the functions of formal amendment rules, critique existing classifications of formal amendment rules, and suggest the beginnings of a more comprehensive account of their structure. My purposes in the chapter are to map the scholarly understanding of formal amendment rules and to generate an agenda for further research into this severely understudied subject in constitutional design.
--Richard Albert