Tom Ginsburg

Principal Investigator

Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Political Science Department.  He holds B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an NSF-funded data set cataloging the world’s constitutions since 1789, that runs the award-winning Constitute website.

His latest book is How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018, with Aziz Huq), and his other books include Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory (2015) (with Nuno Garoupa); The Endurance of National Constitutions (2009) (with Zachary Elkins and James Melton), which won the best book award from Comparative Democratization Section of American Political Science Association; and Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), winner of the C. Herman Pritchett Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal advisor at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he has consulted with numerous international development agencies and governments on legal and constitutional reform.  He currently serves a senior advisor on Constitution Building to International IDEA.

Benjamin Schonthal

Principal Investigator

Ben Schonthal is Professor of Buddhism and Asian Religions and Associate Dean (International) for the Humanities Division at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He received his Ph.D. in the field of History of Religions at the University of Chicago and has held visiting positions at  Northwestern University, the Institute for Advanced Study (Bielefeld) and the Law School at the University of Chicago. He co-directs the Otago Centre for Law and Society (OCLaS) and serves as an Associate Editor for South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and Buddhism, Law & Society and is an executive board member of the Australian Association of Buddhist Studies.

Ben's research examines the intersections of religion, law and politics in late-colonial and contemporary Southern Asia, with a particular focus on Buddhism and law in Sri Lanka. Ben is the author of Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law (Cambridge University Press 2016) and a variety of scholarly articles in journals such as Modern Asian Studies, The Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religions and the International Journal of Constitutional Law. He has received university awards for both his teaching and his research. 

Ben’s current research project, Law's Karma, examines the politics and practice of Buddhist law in contemporary South and Southeast Asia. It is supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand. Ben's academia.edu site, with many of his publications, can be found here.

Arunima Bhattacharjee

Research Assistant & Web Designer

Arunima Bhattacharjee is a research assistant for the American Bar Foundation. She completed her M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago with a specialization in Human Rights, Environment, and International Law. She wrote her master’s thesis on the Freedom of the Press in Egypt and Tunisia from 2011-2013. Before moving to Chicago she worked as a legal assistant for the Lane County Juvenile Consortium in Eugene, OR. She completed her BSc in Journalism from the University of Oregon and wrote an undergraduate thesis on Al Jazeera and the Freedom of the Press in the Middle East. She participated in the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program in 2010 and she is also a U.S. Department of State alumnus for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Exchange Programs.

Paride Stortini

Research Assistant

Paride Stortini is a Ph.D. candidate in History of Religions at the Divinity School, University of Chicago. He has a BA in East Asian Studies from Venice University and an MA in religious studies from Padua University. His dissertation explores ideas and images about ancient India in the discursive construction and cultural imagination of modern Japanese Buddhism. He is also developing a second project on the imaginary of the Silk Road in post-WWII Japan, with a connection to religious practice, media, and the politics of heritage preservation.