Professor Tomás (Tom) Daly is an academic and consultant in the area of democracy-building, public law, and human rights.

biography

Tom is Director of Research Impact at Melbourne Law School, Director of the Electoral Regulation Research Network (ERRN), Co-Convenor of the Constitution Transformation Network (Melbourne Law School), and Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law.

As a consultant on public law, human rights, and democracy-building he has worked on EU, Council of Europe, African Union and International IDEA projects, including designing an African Judicial Network for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, and managing a major €3m Council of Europe project on strengthening judicial ethics in Turkey. He has previously clerked for the Chief Justice of Ireland (6 years) and has worked at the Judicial Studies Institute and the Global Justice Academy at Edinburgh University. A qualified barrister, he holds law degrees from the University of Edinburgh, European University Institute (EUI), and Honorable Society of King's Inns.

Tom has written widely on democratic decay and democracy-building, including a monograph, The Alchemists: Questioning Our Faith in Courts as Democracy-Builders (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and recent articles on democratic decay as a field, democratic crisis in states including Brazil and Poland, and focus on democratic actors like courts, political parties, and citizens. He has written on democratic decay as a columnist for the I-CONnect blog and tweets @DemocracyTalk.

MY BACKGROUND and DEMOCRATIC DECAY

My interest in democratic decay has been strongly influenced by my wide-ranging experience in the public sector, academia, and as a consultant. My first inklings of what is called 'democratic decay' here were during my time representing the Supreme Court of Ireland on the Venice Commission's body for constitutional courts (the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice) from 2008-2011. The system of dealing with research requests from participating courts began to hint at some potentially serious problems during this time. This worsened during my time as consultant editor of the Venice Commission's Bulletin on Constitutional Case-Law (which provides case-law summaries from 61 states) from 2011-2018.

My awareness of the issue also grew as I wrote my first book on courts as 'democracy-builders', which focused on Brazil as a central case-study from a broad comparative and global perspective encompassing Latin America, Europe and Africa. I can now discern democratic decay as a clear thread in the book — although it was not written from this angle. Since 2015, as well as actively researching the area, my awareness of the problem has been enhanced by managing a major €3m Council of Europe project on strengthening judicial ethics in Turkey, designing an African Judicial Network for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, which sharpened my knowledge of the state of democratic governance across the African Union, and my work with the Constitution Transformation Network at Melbourne Law School, which has enhanced my existing knowledge of democratic governance across the Asia-Pacific region developed through working on legal and constitutional reform projects in states including Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

teaching

I have designed (or co-designed) a range of subjects focused on democratic rule, including:

2018: a JD legal research course on 'Understanding Democratic Decay Worldwide' at Melbourne Law School - see the Teaching section for more details.
2020: a cutting-edge intensive Master’s law subject on democratic participation worldwide: ‘Bringing in the People’ at Melbourne Law School (co-designed and taught with Professor Cheryl Saunders.cutting-edge intensive course Bringing in the People with Professor Cheryl Saunders.
2020: Visiting Professor, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (PUCPR) Brazil, Doctoral Program: 6-lecture series on ‘Democratic Decay: Courts, Populism, and Human Rights in Today’s World’.
2020-present: an innovative subject for public servants on the Master of Public Administration (MPA) at Melbourne School of Government: ‘Democracy, Power and the Public Service’.

reading group

In 2018 I established, with Tarun Khaitan as co-convenor, a cross-disciplinary reading group on democratic decay at the University of Melbourne. The group is not currently running but might be re-convened in 2021.

AVAILABLE RESEARCH

I began writing systematically on the subject of democratic decay as a research subject in Spring 2016. You can find a range of research below.

BOOKS

TG Daly and D Samararatne (eds), Democratic Consolidation and Constitutional Endurance in Asia and Africa: Comparing Uneven Pathways (Oxford University Press, 2024).
TG Daly and Wojciech Sadurski (eds), Democracy 2020: Assessing Constitutional Decay, Breakdown, and Renewal Worldwide (International Association of Constitutional Law, Conference e-book, 2020).

articles & BOOK CHAPTERS

(with Dinesha Samararatne), ‘Decolonising Comparative Constitutional Law (and Democratisation Studies)?’ in TG Daly and D Samararatne (eds), Democratic Consolidation and Constitutional Endurance in Asia and Africa: Comparing Uneven Pathways (Oxford University Press, 2024).
‘Democracy’ in J Husa, J Smits and C Valcke (eds), Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law (Edward Elgar, 2023).
‘The Pandemic and the Future of Global Democracy’ in J Grogan and A Donald (eds), Routledge Handbook on Law and the COVID-19 Pandemic (Routledge, 2022).
‘‘Good’ Court-Packing? The Paradoxes of Constitutional Repair in Contexts of Democratic Decay’ (2022) 23(8) German Law Journal 1071-1103.
‘Diagnosing Democratic Decay in Non-Paradigm Cases’ in PH Villas Boas, C Barbosa and B Lamenha (eds), Populismo, Constitucionalismo Populista, Jurisdição Populista e Crise na Democracia (Tramento, 2021) .
‘Breaking Down the Meaning of Constitutional Breakdown’ in U Belavusau and A Gliszczyńska-Grabias (eds), Constitutionalism under Stress: Essays in Honour of Wojciech Sadurski (Oxford University Press, 2020).
(with Brian Christopher Jones), ‘Parties versus Democracy: Addressing Today’s Political-Party Threats to Democratic Rule’ (2020) 18(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 509-538.
‘Designing the Democracy-Defending Citizen’ (2020) 6 Constitutional Studies 189-215. Special issue on ‘Constitutional Decline, Constitutional Design, and Lawyerly Hubris’.
‘Understanding Multi-Directional Democratic Decay: Lessons from the Rise of Bolsonaro in Brazil’ (2020) 14(2) Law and Ethics on Human Rights 199-226. Special issue on ‘Democratic Backsliding and Human Rights’.
‘Illiberal Democracy: Time to Stop Using a Problematic Term?’ (2019) 2 Percorsi Costituzionali 273-298. Special issue on ‘Constitutional Oxymorons’.
‘Democratic Decay: Conceptualising an Emerging Research Field’ (2019) 11(1) Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 9-36.

POLICY ANALYSIS

‘A Highly Important, if Incomplete, Corrective’
In Richard Youngs (ed), Post–Cold War Democratic Declines: The Third Wave of Autocratization (Carnegie Europe, 27 June 2019)
‘Democratic Decay in 2016’
International IDEA Annual Review of Constitution-Building Processes: 2016 (International IDEA, 2017)

Conference papers

‘Populism, Public Law, and Democratic Decay in Brazil: Understanding the Rise of Jair Bolsonaro’
‘Democratic Backsliding and Human Rights’ conference, College of Law and Business, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2-3 January 2019.
‘Populism, Elitism and Democratic Decay in Brazil’
I-CON Conference, 26 June 2018, Panel on 'Populist Challenges to Liberal Constitutionalism II'
‘Illiberal Democracy: Pinning Down a Problematic Concept’
International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) World Congress, 19 June 2018
‘Diagnosing Democratic Decay’
Comparative Constitutional Law Round-table, Gilbert and Tobin Centre for Public Law, UNSW Law School, 7 August 2017
‘Preventing ANC Capture of South African Democracy: A Missed Opportunity for Other ‘Constitutional Courts’?’
I-CON conference, 5-7 July 2016. Panel on ‘Courts, Constitutions & Democratic Hedging’
‘Public Law and the Puzzle of Democratic Decay in Brazil’
Law and Society Association (LSA)/RCSL 2017, Mexico City, 23 June 2017
‘The Democratic Recession and the ‘New’ Public Law: Toward Systematic Analysis’
I-CON conference, Humboldt University, Berlin, 17 June 2016

I-CONnect columns

‘Can International Organisations Help to Stem Democratic Decay?’ (14 November 2017)

‘Contemplating the Future in the Era of Democratic Decay’ (15 September 2017)

‘When is a Limp More than a Limp? Diagnosing Democratic Decay’ (12 July 2017)

‘Democratic Decay in ‘Keystone’ Democracies: The Real Threat to Global Constitutionalism?’ (15 May 2017)

‘The ‘C Word: Democratic Decay and the New Frontiers of Comparative Law’ (8 March 2017)

‘Enough Complacency: Fighting Democratic Decay in 2017’ (11 January 2017)

FIND OUT MORE

You can find out more, and access my research, by:

Following me on Twitter @DemocracyTalk
Following me on Academia.edu

CONTACT

You can contact me about this Resource, or about democratic decay more generally, by e-mailing me at democraticdecay@gmail.com. To collaborate on developing this Resource, see the Get Involved section.