Cindy Skach

Constitutional Theorist and Legal Anthropologist

Contact Information
Phone: (617) 495-4303 x259
E-Mail: skach@fas.harvard.edu
Room: 120
Website: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~skach/index.php


Biographical Statement

Skach is an associate professor of government at Harvard and affiliated professor of international legal studies at Harvard Law School. She researches and teaches comparative public law and legal and political anthropology, particularly in Europe and in Europe’s former colonies. Skach is the author of Borrowing Constitutional Designs: Constitutional Law in Weimar Germany and the French Fifth Republic, which won the Georges Lavau Award in 2005. Her next book investigates the ways legal restrictions on liberty shape identity, and is forthcoming as The Constitution of Peoples. Her work has also been published in journals and edited volumes in the US and Europe. With support from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation, she is currently writing a book on the “modernization” of Islamic law. Concurrently, under the auspices of the Film Study Center at Harvard, Skach is producing “Cadi Justice,” a visual ethnography of Islamic law in transition; and “Race,” a visual ethnography of ethnicity and politics in a Parisian suburb. Skach’s other Harvard affiliations include the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Articles and Chapters

• "From ‘Just’ to Just ‘Decent’? Constitutional Transformations and the Reordering of the European Public Sphere", Maryland Law Review, Vol. 67, Issue 1,forthcoming.



• "The 'Newest' Separation of Powers,"
  International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 5, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 1-29.



• "Semi-Presidentialism in Russia and Post-Communist Europe: Aggravating Democratic Possibilities" (with Timothy J. Colton),
  0 in Alfred Stepan, ed.,
  Democracies in Danger: Diagnoses and Prescriptions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming).



• "Leyla Sahin v. Turkey and 'Teacher Headscarf Case' BVerfG, Case No. 2BvR 1436/02,"
  American Journal of International Law, Centennial Issue, Vol. 100, No. 1 (January 2006), pp. 186-195.




• "Constitutional Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy"
  Constitutional Political Economy, Vol. 16, No. 4 (December 2005).



• "We, the Peoples? Constitutionalizing the European Union,"
  Journal of Common Market Studies, Volume 43, Number 1 (March 2005), pp. 149-170. (pdf)



• "The Russian Predicament” (with Timothy J. Colton)
  Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 113-126. (pdf)
  
  Also presented at the III General Assembly of the Club of Madrid, November 2004. (pdf)



• "Rethinking Judicial Review? Shaping the Toleration of Difference," in Adam Czarnota, Martin Krygier, and Wojciech Sadurski, eds.,
  Rethinking the Rule of Law after Communism: Constitutionalism, Dealing with the Past, and the Rule of Law (pdf)
  Budapest: Central European University Press, forthcoming



• "Constitutional Subtypes in Transition," in Mihaela Serban Rosen, ed.,
  Constitutionalism in Transition: Africa and Eastern Europe
  Warsaw: Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, 2003, pp. 121-129.



• "Parlamentarische oder präsidentielle Demokratie? Zum theoretischen Grenznutzen einer institutionellen Dichotomie in der Regierungslehre," (with Bernhard Thibaut) in Rolf Hanisch, Hrsg.
  Demokratieexport in die Länder des Südens?
  Hamburg: Deutsches Übersee-Institut, 1996, pp. 541-573.



• "Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation: Parliamentarianism versus Presidentialism," (with Alfred Stepan)
  World Politics, Vol. 46, No. 1 (October 1993), pp. 1-22.



• "Quadros metainstitucionais e consolidção democrática," (with Alfred Stepan) in Bolívar Lamounier and Dieter Nohlen, eds.,
  Presidencialismo ou Parlamentarismo: Perspecitvas sobre a Reorganização Institucional Brasileira
  São Paulo: IDESP, 1993, pp. 218-244.



• "Constitutional Reform: The Best (Worst?) of Both Worlds,"
  ReVista, Fall 2002.
  Available here



• "Democracy Under Siege," (pdf)
  Russia Watch, No. 4 (December 2000)