Tommaso Pavone
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Tommaso Pavone is an assistant professor of European politics in the Department of Political Science and an associate graduate faculty member of the Centre for European, Russian & Eurasian Studies (CERES), as well as a visiting researcher at the ARENA Center for European Studies at the University of Oslo. His research traces how interactions between lawyers, courts and policymakers shape political development, social change and the rule of law, with a comparative focus on Europe and the European Union (EU).
Pavone’s new book published by Cambridge University Press — The Ghostwriters: Lawyers and the Politics Behind the Judicial Construction of Europe — reconstructs how entrepreneurial lawyers promoted the development of the EU by encouraging clients to challenge state laws and mobilizing national courts against their own governments. The book has been praised as “the most important book on European legal integration in decades” and a “stunning achievement” (in reviews by Mark Pollack and Charles Epp) and won six prizes from the American Political Science Association (APSA), the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) and the Law and Society Association (LSA).
Pavone’s broader research agenda has produced publications in leading peer-reviewed journals like the American Political Science Review, World Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Law & Society Review and Journal of Law & Courts. His research has also been featured in high-profile press outlets, including The New York Times, Financial Times, Politico and EUobserver, as well as in debates at the European Parliament. Pavone is a founding member of “The Good Lobby Profs” — a group of 60+ academics in Europe and North America promoting the respect of the rule of law by providing pro bono expert analysis to defend and strengthen respect for democracy, the rule of law and human rights in the EU.
Prior to joining the University of Toronto, Pavone was an assistant professor in the School of Government and Public Policy (SGPP) at the University of Arizona and a postdoctoral fellow at the PluriCourts Centre at the University of Oslo. He received his PhD in 2019 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University.