The International Society of Public Law (ICON•S) today announces that Professors Richard Albert and Marta Cartabia have taken office as the new Co-Presidents of ICON•S. Longstanding members of ICON•S, Albert and Cartabia bring years of involvement and leadership to the role.
Speaking at the Closing Ceremony of the Society’s annual global conference, Albert and Cartabia announced a theme for their tenure at the helm of ICON•S: Transforming Thought into Action to Defend the Values of Public Law.
Marta Cartabia is currently the Minister of Justice in the Government of Italy. A distinguished jurist and formerly President of the Constitutional Court of Italy, she is a full professor of constitutional law at Bocconi University (on leave), having earned her doctoral degree from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She has held visiting appointments at several universities across Europe and the United States, including the University of Notre Dame, New York University, and Yale University. She is a Substitute Member for Italy in the European Commission for Democracy through Law of the Council of Europe, also known as Venice Commission.
Richard Albert is Professor of World Constitutions and Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. An advisor to multinational organizations and counselor to governments, his research focuses on democratic innovation and constitutional reform. His scholarship on constitutionalism has been translated into Bahasa, Chinese, French, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. He has held visiting faculty appointments in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Israel, and the United States. A graduate of Yale, Oxford and Harvard, he is a former law clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada.
Albert and Cartabia are both longstanding members of the Society. They will serve a non-renewable three-year term until 2024.
The Co-Presidency will be advised by Professor Diletta Tega in her capacity as Special Advisor. Tega is an Associate Professor and Vice President of the Bioethics Committee at the University of Bologna, a member of the General Council of ICON-S, and a former law clerk at the Italian Constitutional Court. She has held visiting fellowships at the European University Institute and New York University. An expert in global constitutionalism, European protection of human rights, and anti-discrimination law, Tega is the author of two books: I diritti in crisi (2012) and La Corte nel contesto (2020).