Courts in Divided Societies

The project on Courts in Divided Societies systematically explores the topics raised in constitutional court rulings in divided societies. Studies on court rulings typically focus on one country over time or on a finite set of topics in several countries. Such studies have been key to understanding the legal dynamics of that country or topic set, but they don’t compare all issues people bring to courts across many countries. Our project instead studies court elaboration of all constitutional topics across multiple countries.

Our court project uses the Comparative Constitutions Project topics, supplemented with additional topics related to court reasoning and procedures, to identify the constitutional topics raised in apex court rulings in divided societies. This allows us to assess court elaboration of the full suite of constitutional topics across all court rulings for selected courts. The project focuses on rulings in post-conflict divided socities in the first ten year's after a constitution's adoption when the constitution—and the court elaborating it—are in a unique position to shape implementation of the new social compact. The project is currently tagging court rulings from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq, with plans to expand to other countries thereafter.

The Courts in Divided Societies project is led by Ashley Moran. Current UT students working on the project include Isra Akhtar, Sydney Camilletti, Donya Farrokhi, Alianna Gavalya, Raneem Mahrouq, and Delainie Ramirez.