Leverhulme award for Alison Young
3 April 2013
Dr Alison Young, Fellow and Tutor in Law, has been awarded a prestigious Leverhulme grant for two years from October 2013. The money will be spent on a partial teaching buyout to enable Dr Young to focus on her current project, a new way of understanding constitutional theory. Here’s her abstract:
Constitutional theory is often presented in terms of polemics – between legal constitutionalism and political constitutionalism; descriptive and normative theories; internal and external approaches to the subject. This project challenges these traditional approaches. It proposes a new way of analysing constitutions, applying a model-theoretic approach arguing that political and legal constitutionalism are best understood as models whose ideals cannot be fully realized. It proposes a new model of analysing constitutions in terms of dynamic interactions between legal and political controls, arguing for greater engagement of citizens in this process to enhance constitutional legitimacy.