We are heartbroken to announce the passing of one of our most accomplished faculty members in the full flight of his career. Ran Hirschl (Ph.D., Yale), University Professor and the David R. Cameron Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Law, died on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, after an extended battle with cancer. Our hearts go out to his wife, Ayelet Shachar, herself an eminent University of Toronto colleague, to their son, Shai, and to Ran’s mother, Naomi Ernst-Hirschl.
Ran was a path-breaking scholar, dedicated mentor to generations of students, and loyal friend and colleague, since joining the Department of Political Science in 1999.
Ran leaves behind an extraordinary academic legacy, including five major books and over 150 articles and book chapters. Ran was internationally known as a pioneer of comparative constitutional law and in particular the intersection of comparative politics and comparative constitutionalism. His monographs — each of which won a major international award — have established new areas of research, reshaping traditional disciplines and opening novel avenues of inquiry. Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (2004), his iconoclastic first book, brings a social science and comparative lens to the study of courts, arguing that courts were established not by altruistic founders, but rather by political elites seeking to protect their privileges. With his second work, Constitutional Theocracy (2010), Ran demonstrated the need to explore the constitutions of non-democratic, non-Western regimes alongside traditional studies of Western constitutional democracies. The jury awarding the Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory “regarded Constitutional Theocracy as a brilliant analysis of law in its social context and a fascinating exploration of an issue of contemporary and global significance, namely, the role of constitutional law and courts in non-secular societies.” Ran’s third book, Comparative Matters: The Renaissance of Comparative Constitutional Law (2014), is, in the words of The University of Chicago’s Tom Ginsburg, “a book of dazzling scope and depth…. An instant classic from which no one will fail to learn something new.” With his fourth monograph, City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity (2020), Ran used his constitutional expertise to shed light on megacities, which are home to more than half the world’s population. In a review in Publius, Amal Sethi describes City, State as “a field-defining book — the results of which are already evident within the short period since this book’s launch….” During his final days, Ran completed his fifth and final book, Constitutionalism 2050.
Ran’s distinctions are abundant. In 2024, he was named a University Professor, a distinction conferred on no more than the top 2 per cent of University of Toronto faculty members for outstanding scholarly achievement. Previously, he had won academic excellence awards in five countries and attracted over $7.5 million in competitive research grants, including a Killam Research Fellowship from the Canada Council of the Arts and a coveted Alexander von Humboldt International Research Award, the most highly-endowed research award in Germany. A Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Constitutionalism, Democracy and Development supported his work from 2006–2016.
Ran cared deeply for Canada. He considered his induction into the Royal Society of Canada in 2014, only 15 years after making the country his home, one of his greatest academic honours. In virtually all his writings and public lectures, he pointed to the Canadian constitutional transformation since the adoption of the Charter, and to the rise of Canadian constitutional jurisprudence as among the most frequently cited worldwide. His 2017 article “Going Global? Canada as Importer and Exporter of Constitutional Thought” has been frequently referred to by Supreme Court of Canada justices as illustrating that trend, most recently by Justice Malcolm Rowe in his Trudeau Foundation annual conference keynote lecture (June 2025) and in his address at Queen’s University (October 2025). Ran’s seminal work has been translated into half a dozen languages, discussed in numerous scholarly fora, and addressed in leading media venues from the CBC, New York Times and Folha de São Paulo to Le Figaro, Deutsche Welle, and the Jerusalem Post.
Ran was a generous and life-altering mentor to generations of students, teaching them to explore the inner workings of the Canadian constitution in a comparative framework. He educated hundreds of undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students at the University of Toronto as well as Harvard, Yale, UT Austin, and other leading institutions, providing them with transformative guidance, and serving as a model of profound intellectual inquiry. In 2010 Ran received an Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Toronto and the Certificate for Outstanding Teaching in Public Law from Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society of the APSA.
His fearless intellectual spirit lives on with his colleagues, students, family, and friends. They will feel Ran’s loss acutely — especially his family, whom he adored.
In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Ran Hirschl Prize for the Leading Undergraduate Student in Law & Politics, which will be officially announced this fall. An event celebrating Ran’s life will be held at the Department of Political Science in the new academic year.