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Seminar Series

Seminar Series

2025-26 Speakers Schedule

(Unless otherwise noted, all talks will be held in person at the Henderson House, beginning at noon)

Sept. 25	Colby Wicker, CCD JD Fellow	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"Universal Injunctions"
Oct. 23	Prof. Chidi Odinkalu	Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy	"A Ruler's Shield? Re-evaluating the Norm Against Unconstitutional Change of Government in Africa"
Oct. 30	Stanislaw Drozd and Lukasz Lasek	Wardynski & Partners (Warsaw)	"The De Facto Doctrine: A Comparative Analysis of Reconstruction Era U.S. to Poland"
Oct. 30 (4:30pm)	Prof. Oran Doyle	Trinity College (Dublin)	"Managing Institutional Change: The Political Economy of Constitutional Difficulty"
Oct. 31	Prof. Noah Ever-Schmid	Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences	"The King's American Ghost: The Revival of Royalist Authoritarianism in American Political Thought"
Nov. 6	Prof. Nicholas Almendares	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"Unitary Enforcement"
Nov. 14 (Friday)	Prof. Andrew Reiter	Mount Holyoke College	"The Legal Foundations of State Repression"

Spring 2026

Jan. 15	Terry Hoverter and Hovo Harutyunyan	National Democratic Institute in Armenia	"NDI Opportunities in Armenia"
Jan. 22	Prof. Svitlana Khyliuk	Ukrainian Catholic University	"Ukrainian Constitutionalism"
Jan. 29	Prof. Rafael Macia	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"The Implicit Problem with Implicit Unamendability"
Feb. 5	Prof. Sean Beienburg	Arizona State University	"Progressive States Rights: The Forgotten History of Federalism"
Feb. 12	Prof. Zachary Elkins	University of Texas Austin	"Inducements to Leave Office"
Feb. 26	Prof. Francesco Biagi	University of Bologna (Italy)	"Constitution-buillding After the Arab Spring: Challenges and Perspectives"
March 5	Zachary Zambrano	CCD Fellow, Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"History of the Kurdish Freedom Movement with a Focus on the Government of Rojava (AANES) and Iraqi Kurdistan"
March 12	Prof. Kanybek Kuvatpekov and Mr. Alibek Rakhimov	Krgyzstan and Washington, DC	"How Kyrgyzstan's Democracy Survived an Insurrection"
April 2	Prof. Solomon N. Abesha	Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia)	TBD
April 9	Dr. Khuhly Robin	Mizoram University (India)	"Ethnographic Research in Mizoram, India"
April 11	CCD SYMPOSIUM
April 16	Prof. David Williams	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"Compacts and Covenants"

Sept. 5	Dr. Janos Mecs	Eötvös Loránd University	"Tampering with the Law of Democracy as a Cornerstone of the Hungarian Illiberal-populist Constitutional System"
Sept. 12	Dr. Sanaa Alsarghali	An-Najah Constitutional Studies Centre	"Is it the Time to Talk About a Palestinian Interim Constitution?"
Sept. 13	Dr. Tamara El Khoury	Michigan Environmental Council	"Constitution-making and Elections in South Sudan: The Ever Returning Dilemma"
Oct. 3	Alemayehu Weldemariam	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"The Life and Work of Professor Andreas Eshete: Ethiopian Political Philosopher and Constitutionalist"
Oct. 25	Prof. Maria Burcur	Indiana University Department of History	"(Un)Fit for the Nation: Citizenship and Biopolitics in Nineteenth Century Romania"
Oct. 31	Brady Harman, Samantha Lalisan, and Lara Kalwinski		"CCD Alumni Advise Students on Placements"
Nov. 7	Erin Houlihan	National Democratic Institute	"The Weird and Wonderful Worlds of Constitution-Building and Democratic Governance Assistance – A Practitioner’s Perspective on Alternative Career Paths for Curious Young Lawyers"
Nov. 14	Prof. Andrew Hammond	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"The Climate Crisis, Displacement, and Belonging in the U.S. Welfare State"
Feb. 13	Prof. Bill Scheuerman	IU College of Arts and Sciences	"What is Property Disobedience?"
Feb. 20	Prof. Steve Sanders	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"Universities and the Constitution"
April 3	Prof. Laura Foster	IU College of Arts and Sciences	Plants as Inventors: Interrogating Human Exceptionalism within Narratives of Patent Law and Artificial Intelligence
April 10	Ahmed Elbasyouny	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	To Stop an Anti-Democrat: Militant Democracy at Home and Abroad

Sept. 7	Zoltán Pozsár-Szentmiklósy	ELTE Faculty of Law, Hungary
Sept. 11	Clark Lombardi	University of Washington School of Law
Sept. 14	Cynthia Williams	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"Corporate Responsibilities for Political Polarization"
Sept. 28	Sana Alsahali	An-Najah National University	"The Constitutional Building Process in Palestine: A Continuing Endeavor or a Stagnant Path"
Oct. 27	Joseph Cozza	Rice University Department of Political Science	"The Social Foundations of Constitutional Innovation"
Nov. 2	Tamta Muradashvili	Georgian attorney and Fulbright Scholar	"Democracy Watch: The Case of the Georgian Media"
Nov. 10	Steven Ratner	University of Michigan Law School	"Human Rights Politics at the United Nations: An Outsider's/Insider's Account"
Nov. 16	Jennifer Oliva	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"Policing Pregnancy 'Crimes'"
Nov. 20	John Packer	University of Ottawa Faculty of Law	"Again and Again? Unpacking Conflations of Individual and State Responsibility in Addressing Contemporary Genocides"
March 1	Eleonora Bottini	U. de Caen Normandie	"Modernizing Constitutions: A Comparative Analysis of Justifications for Constitutional Reforms"
March 28	Tinashe Hofisi	University of Wisconsin Law School	"The Chief Executive and the Chief Justice: Popular Power and Judicial Supremacy in the Post-Independence African States"
April 1	Nicholas Almendares	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"Awkward Guardians: Courts as Bulwarks Against Populism"
April 4	Yvette Butler	Indiana University Maurer School of Law	"Survival Labor and Economic Liberty"
May 16	Svitlana Khyliuk	Ukraine Catholic University	"Russian-Ukraine War: Wat are Ukrainians Fighting For?"

Sept. 8, 2022	Mukhit Yeleuov	Kazakh lawyer and CCD visiting scholar
Sept. 15, 2022	Jallah Barbu	University of Liberia Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law
Sept. 22, 2022	Manuel José Cepeda Espinosa	Former President of the Constitutional Court of Colombia
Oct. 10, 2022	Chantal Victoria Bright	University of Manchester, UK
Oct. 27, 2022	Gennadiy Druzenko	Center for Constitutional Design, Ukraine
Nov. 3, 2022	Ahmed Elbasyouney	PhD Fellow, Center for Constitutional Democracy
Jan. 26, 2023	João Marinotti	Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Feb. 9, 2023	Jorge Barrera Rojas	Universidad de Chile - Notre Dame University
March 9, 2023	Alessandro Ferrari	University of Insubria, Italy
April 6, 2023	India Thusi	Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Sept. 16, 2021	Gennadiy Druzenko	Ukranian activist and former CCD Fellow
Sept. 23, 2021	Zardasht Mohamed	Iraqi lawyer and former CCD Fellow
Sept. 30, 2021	Laith Nasrawin	University of Jordan
Oct. 14, 2021	Tamás Szabados	Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Law
Oct. 21, 2022	Tim Hellwig	Indiana University Department of Political Science
Nov. 4, 2021	Nicholas Almendares	Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Nov. 18, 2021	Svitlana Khyliuk	Ukranian Catholic University
Feb. 3, 2022	Kevin Brown	Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Feb. 17, 2022	Robert Tsai	Boston University School of Law
March 3, 2022	Justine Guichard	University of Paris
March 10, 2022	Asaf Lubin	Indiana University Maurer School of Law
March 31, 2022	Christiana Ochoa	Indiana University Maurer School of Law