On September 20, Professor Richard Albert of the University of Texas at Austin delivered a lecture entitled “Constitutional Amendments in Constitutional Democracies.” The UP Law Center’s Institute for the Administration of Justice invited Prof. Albert to deliver the lecture which was based on his recent publication, “Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions” (Oxford University Press 2019). Prof. Albert discussed themes that inform debates on constitutional change. These are “transformation” (when an amendment might be a dismemberment of the constitution), “eternity” (the use of unamendable provisions), and “illusion” (issues on the need to follow the formal rules for amendment).

Prof. Albert is the William Stamps Farish Professor of Law and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published over one dozen books and has held visiting appointments at Yale University, the University of Toronto, the Externado University of Colombia, and the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. Richard Albert holds law and political science degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Harvard, and is a former law clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada.