Bio
Justin O. Frosini is Robert Abernethy Adjunct Professor at SAIS Europe
Director of the
Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development; Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law at the Luigi Bocconi University
Justin O. Frosini is Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law at the Bocconi University, Milan, and Adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is also the Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development in Bologna, Italy. Frosini is the co-coordinator of a research group of the International Association of Constitutional Law devoted to constitutionalism in illiberal democracies, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the
Max Planck Encyclopedia of Constitutional Law published by Oxford University Press. Frosini has been a visiting professor at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico and at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada where, in 2010, he was awarded the European Union Centre of Excellence Visiting Scholar Grant. Since 2003 he is the co-director of the Europe Union and Legal Reform Summer School held every July in Igalo, Montenegro. Frosini was also a member of a group of seven international scholars conducting case studies for a 5-year project on Constitutional Design and Conflict Management in Africa funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. He received his PhD in constitutional law from the University of Bologna.
Frosini is the author of a book on the legal value of constitutional preambles for which he received an Excellency in Research Prize from Bocconi University in 2013. He has published extensively in English and Italian in the field of comparative constitutional law with particular attention for federalism, regionalism and devolution, Brexit and the European Union, constitutional justice and forms of government. Frosini is a regular media commentator and writes a trimonthly report on constitutional matters in the United Kingdom for
Quaderni costituzionali, one of Italy’s leading constitutional law journals.
Courses
- Constitutional Development and Democratization
The spread of human rights and constitutional, representative government based on the rule of law, as either spurs for development or desirable outcomes of development, seems both possible and urgently necessary and yet we appear to be in a phase where many countries are undergoing a democratic retrogression.
This course examines the nature, fate and prospects for constitutional development and democratisation across the globe. Employing both the diachronic and synchronic methods of analysis typical of comparative constitutional law, the course addresses topics such as constitution-making and constitutional amendment; forms of state and forms of government as well as the role and functions of constitutional and supreme courts with the aim of understanding how a given institutional framework may facilitate or obstruct transitions to democracy. The experience of so-called ‘consolidated’ democracies will often be used to examine the transition to democracy of other countries.
- Law and Institutions of the European Union
Is the European Union (EU) an international organization or a State? Is it democratic or technocratic? Are EU citizens benefitting from EU integration and if so how and why? These are among the existential questions that have accompanied the development of the EU and its law in the last decades. These questions are evermore poignant when the model of EU integration is challenged on many fronts; from Brexit to the migration crisis, from the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing great recession to the current pandemic and growing geopolitical tensions. Still, the EU remains the most advanced regional experiment of rule-based transnational governance: its law has transformed the lives of EU citizens and provides a model for regional integration to the rest of the world.
The course offers an overview of the law and institutions of the European Union; it focuses both on its constitutional structure and its substantive law in key areas of EU policymaking, such as the internal market, competition, human rights and external relations. Employing both an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective (comparing the EU with nation states and other international organizations), the course will address topics including the historical development of the EU, its current constitutional arrangements and form of government, the nature of EU law and its enforcement, the functioning of the EU internal market and competition law, the EU charter of Fundamental Rights.
The learning objectives are for students to be able to: understand and describe the structures and processes of the EU, its law and institutions; identify the functions of different legal institutions at the EU level; compare and contrast the constitutional structure of the EU and the nature of its law with other international organizations and states; formulate arguments about the ways in which legal arrangements affect key areas of the European economy and polity; participate in debates concerning the present challenges faced by the EU.
