David E. Landau

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David Landau headshot

David E. Landau

Position
Mason Ladd Professor and Associate Dean for International Programs
Contact Information

Florida State University
College of Law
Main Classroom Building, Room 316
Phone: 850.644.6341
dlandau@law.fsu.edu

Education

Ph.D. (Political Science), Harvard University, 2015 
J.D., magna cum laude, Harvard University, 2004
A.B., summa cum laude, Harvard University, 2001

Professor David Landau’s scholarship focuses on constitutional design, constitutional theory, and comparative constitutional law. His recent work has focused on a range of issues with contemporary salience both in the United States and elsewhere around the world, including constitutional change and constitution-making, judicial role and the enforcement of rights, impeachment, and the erosion of democracy. His scholarship is interdisciplinary, combining insights from law and political science.  

Professor Landau’s work has been or is forthcoming in leading law journals including the California Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, and the Harvard International Law Journal. His monograph Abusive Constitutional Borrowing (co-authored with Rosalind Dixon) was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. He has previously published several other books and edited volumes with Oxford University Press and Edward Elgar Press.

Professor Landau’s work has been cited by the high courts of several countries, including the Supreme Court of Israel, the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of Colombia, the Constitutional Tribunal of Chile, the Supreme Federal Tribunal of Brazil, and the Supreme Court of Kenya.

Professor Landau received a Fulbright specialist grant to Chile in 2022, during that country’s ongoing constitution-making process. In 2011, he served as a consultant on constitutional issues for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Honduras. Since 2012, he has been a founding editor of ICONnect, the blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law, and serves on the Scientific-Advisory board of the same journal. He has published op-eds in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

At the College of Law, Professor Landau has taught Constitutional Law I, Comparative Constitutional Law, Public International Law, Civil Procedure, Conflict of Laws, and International Litigation and Arbitration. He has twice won a University Graduate Teaching Award, in 2012-2013 and 2019-2020. He also serves as Associate Dean for International Programs, and in that capacity supervises the graduate LL.M. Program in American Law for Foreign Lawyers, the Certificate Program in International Law for J.D. students, and the College of Law’s summer program at Oxford University.

 

Select Recent and Forthcoming Publications

Abusive Constitutional Borrowing (with Rosalind Dixon) (Oxford University Press 2021)

Comparative Constitution-Making (co-edited with Hanna Lerner) (Edward Elgar Press 2019)

The Unsettled Canon of Social Rights Enforcement in Latin America, in The Canon of Comparative Constitutional Law (Sujit Choudhry, Michaela Hailbronner & Matthias Kumm, editors) (Oxford University Press) (forthcoming 2022)

Can Constitutions Fix Party System Breakdowns? A Skeptical View, in Constitutionalism and a Right to Effective Governance (Vicki C. Jackson & Yasmin Dawood, editors) (Cambridge University Press) (forthcoming 2022)

Defensive Social Rights (with Rosalind Dixon), in Oxford Handbook of Economic and Social Rights (Malcolm Langford & Katharine G. Young, editors) (Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2022)

Constitutional Backsliding and its Responses in Colombia, in Constitutionalism in Context (David Law, editor) (Cambridge University Press 2022)

Designing and Protecting Term Limits (with Rosalind Dixon), in Elgar Handbook of Comparative Election Law (James A. Gardner, editor) (Edward Elgar Press 2022)

The Myth of the Illiberal Democratic Constitution, in Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism (Stephen Holmes, Andras Sajo & Renata Uitz, editors) (Routledge 2021)

Justice Cepeda’s Institution-Building on the Colombian Constitutional Court: A Fusion of the Political and the Legal, in Towering Judges (Rehan Abeyratne & Iddo Porat, editors) (Cambridge University Press 2021)

Courts and Constitution Making: A Contextual Approach, in Redrafting Constitutions in Democratic Orders: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives (Gabriel Negretto, editor) (Cambridge University Press 2020)

Term Limits and the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment Doctrine: Lessons from Latin America (with Rosalind Dixon & Yaniv Roznai), in The Politics of Presidential Term Limits (Alex Baturo & Robert Elgie, editors) (Oxford University Press 2019)

Constitutional Non-Transformation? Socioeconomic Rights beyond the Poor (with Rosalind Dixon), in The Future of Social and Economic Rights (Katharine G. Young, editor) (Cambridge University Press 2019)

The Law of Democratic Disqualification (with Tom Ginsburg & Aziz Huq), 110 Cal. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2022)

Rethinking the Federal Emergency Powers Regime, 83 Ohio St. L.J. __ (forthcoming 2022)

A Broad Read of Ely: Political Process Theory for New Democracies (with Manuel José Cepeda Espinosa), 19 Int’l J. Const. L. 548 (2021)

Federalism, Democracy, and the 2020 Election (with Hannah J. Wiseman & Samuel Wiseman), 99 Texas L. Rev. Online 96 (2021)

The Comparative Constitutional Law of Presidential Impeachment (with Tom Ginsburg & Aziz Huq), 88 U. Chicago L. Rev. 81 (2021)

The Causes and Consequences of a Judicialized Peace Process in Colombia, 18 Int’l J. Const. L. 1303 (2020)

Personalism and the Trajectories of Populist Constitutions, 16 Ann. Rev. L. & Soc. Sci. 293 (2020)

Federalism for the Worst Case (with Hannah Wiseman & Samuel Wiseman), 105 Iowa L. Rev. 1187 (2020)

Abusive Judicial Review: Courts Against Democracy (with Rosalind Dixon), 53 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1313 (2020)

Constitutional End-Games: Making Presidential Term Limits Stick (with Rosalind Dixon), 71 Hastings L.J. 359 (2020)

New Directions in the Comparative Law and Politics of Judicial Review (review of Theunis Roux, The Politico-Legal Dynamics of Judicial Review: A Comparative Analysis and David M. Brinks & Abby Blass, The DNA of Constitutional Justice in Latin America), 55 Tulsa L. Rev. 225 (2020)

Choosing Between Simple and Complex Remedies in Socioeconomic Rights Cases, 70 U. Toronto L.J. 105 (2019)

From an Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment to an Unconstitutional Constitution? Lessons from Honduras (with Yaniv Roznai & Rosalind Dixon), 8 Global Constitutionalism 40 (2019)