University of Illinois College of Law

About

Francesco Biagi is Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law in the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna, Deputy Secretary General of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL-AIDC), and Research Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development (a partnership between the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe and the University of Bologna). From October 2015 to January 2017, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law (Heidelberg), where he now serves as a legal consultant. Biagi obtained a Ph.D. in Constitutional Law from the University of Ferrara after graduating in Law from the University of Bologna (magna cum laude).

Biagi has been Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois College of Law (regularly since 2015) and at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law (2022). He carried out periods of study and research at the Cardozo School of Law (New York City), the Central European University (Budapest), the Universidad del País Vasco (Bilbao), and the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico City). He is member of the Advisory Board of the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press). Since 2013 he has provided trainings and consultancies – on various projects related to constitution-building and the rule of law – to governmental and judicial institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa (especially in Somalia), Middle East and North Africa (especially in Morocco, Jordan and Palestine), and Latin America (where he provided technical assistance to the constitution-drafting bodies of Chile). He has presented his works in scores of national and international conferences, including at the University of Chicago Law School, University of Illinois College of Law, Johns Hopkins University SAIS (Washington DC and Bologna), Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, Sciences Po (Paris), Lancaster University, LUISS Guido Carli University (Rome), and Bocconi University (Milan).

Biagi has written extensively in English, Italian and Spanish on transition processes, constitution-building, forms of government, constitutional justice, fundamental rights, federalism, electoral justice, hybrid and illiberal regimes. His most recent book is European Constitutional Courts and Transitions to Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2020). It has been reviewed in leading outlets including in The American Journal of Comparative Law, the European Constitutional Law Review and the European Law Review.

His latest publications also include Comparative Constitutional History. Volume 2: Uses of History in Constitutional Adjudication (edited with J.O. Frosini and J. Mazzone, Brill, 2023); “La neutralización de los Tribunales constitucionales en los regímenes populistas-iliberales: un análisis a partir de los casos de Hungría y Polonia”, 116 Revista de Derecho político (2023). “Constitution Drafting After the Arab Spring. A Comparative Overview”, 29 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 1 (2022); “Foreign Law in Constitutional Interpretation”, in R. Wolfrum, R. Grote, F. Lachenmann (eds.), The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press 2021).

Education

PhD University of Ferrara, Italy
BA, JD University of Bologna, Italy