Zachary Elkins is Associate Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. Before that, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois. He received a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on issues of democracy, national identity, and institutional reform, with an emphasis on cases in Latin America. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Designed by Diffusion: Constitutional Reform in Developing Democracies which examines the origins of democratic institutions in the developing world. Learn more.

Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of Law and Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. He holds B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Judicial Review in New Democracies, which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association, and editor of many volumes, including Rule By Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (with Tamir Moustafa), Comparative Constitutional Design, and Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (with Alberto Simpser). He has served as an advisor to the Judicial Commission of Afghanistan, the parliament of Mongolia, and numerous law and constitutional reform committees. Before entering law teaching he was a Legal Advisor at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in the Hague. Learn more.

James Melton most recently served as Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department of Political Science at University College London from 2012-2015. Before joinging UCL, he was an Assistant Professor at the IMT Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy. He holds a B.A. degree from Illinois Wesleyan University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on how the design of formal institutions contributes to economic, political, and social development. He recently published an edited volume that analyzes the historic and contemporary influence of Magna Carta entitled Magna Carta and Its Modern Legacy (with Robert Hazell). Learn more.

Jessie Baugher is our Project Manager based in Champaign, Illinois. She joined the CCP as a research assistant in 2008 and took over management duties in 2011. She holds a B.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a Project Management Strategy Certificate from the University of Chicago. Before joining the Comparative Constitutions Project, she worked for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a national non-profit organization dedicated to protecting constitutional rights and liberties.

Emilio Gallardo – Ecuador
Sergei Hovyadinov – Russia, Ukraine, Belarus
David Kosar – Czech Republic, Slovakia
Rodrigo Vitorino Souza Alves – Brazil
Stepan Zolotar – Ukraine