Professor Tomás Daly

Overview

Professor Tomás Daly is a convenor of the Constitutional Transformation Network and Director of the Electoral Regulation Research Nework, both at Melbourne Law School. He is also the Director of the global research platform Democratic Decay & Renewal (DEM-DEC), Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law at Edinburgh Law School. His comparative research focuses on the connections between law, policy and democratic governance, with a particular focus on young democracies, fragile democracies, and the phenomenon of 'democratic decay'. Key publications include his 2017 book, The Alchemists: Questioning Our Faith in Courts as Democracy-Builders (Cambridge University Press), and recent publications on democratic decay as a research field, 'multi-directional' democratic decay, and achieving resilient democracy through constitutional design.

As well as extensive experience in the university sector (at Melbourne, Edinburgh and Copenhagen universities), Tom has worked in a variety of roles in government and international organisations, including running the Office of the Chief Justice of Ireland for over 6 years, managing a $5m Council of Europe project concerning judicial ethics in Turkey, and designing a pan-continental African Judicial Network for the African Union. He has also worked on democracy and rule of law projects for organisations such as the United Nations and the Council of Europe in states and territories including Australia, Ireland, Georgia, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Palestine, Uzbekistan, and the Pacific. He tweets on public law, democracy building and democratic decay @DemocracyTalk.