Tom Gerald Daly

Tom Gerald Daly

Dr Tom Daly is Assistant Director of the Melbourne School of Government, Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law at Edinburgh Law School, and a co-convenor of the Constitution Transformation Network at Melbourne Law School. He previously clerked for the Chief Justice of Ireland. He has worked on a variety of development projects worldwide at Edinburgh University’s Global Justice Academy, and as a consultant on Council of Europe, European Union, International IDEA, and Irish government projects, most recently managing a major Council of Europe project on ‘Strengthening Judicial Ethics in Turkey’.

Tom’s research focuses on the connections between law, policy and democratic governance, with a particular focus on young democracies and fragile democracies. His recent publications include an article on courts as ‘democracy-builders’ in Global Constitutionalism, a co-edited collection, Law and Policy in Latin America: Transforming Courts, Institutions, and Rights (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), and a policy report on ‘The Judiciary and Constitutional Transitions’ (International IDEA and the International Development Law Organization (IDLO)). His book, The Alchemists: Questioning Our Faith in Courts as Democracy-Builders, will be published in October 2017 by Cambridge University Press.

His current research project concerns democratic decay worldwide and the use of public law as a remedial tool. He recently launched the Democratic Decay Resource. He is also a co-editor of the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-Connect) blog, focusing on the theme of democratic decay. He also tweets on public law, democracy building and democratic decay @DemocracyTalk.