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 Bocconi University
Justin O. Frosini is Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law at the Bocconi University, Milan, and the Robert Abernethy Adjunct Professor 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.
