Book Launch: The War Against Law: What's wrong with common good constitutionalism

Professor David Dyzenhaus is coming to Edinburgh Law School on Thursday 5 November for the launch of his new book, The War Against Law: What's wrong with common good constitutionalism. The event runs from 14:00 to 16:00 in the Moot Court Room at Old College, and it's hosted by the Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law and the Centre for Legal Theory.

Dyzenhaus is a University Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In The War Against Law, he argues that some lawyers at elite universities are attacking the rule of law and democracy in the name of a 'common good' that he traces back to the authoritarian thought of the 1930s, specifically the work of Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin.

He focuses on the 'Judicial Power Project' in the UK, with John Finnis and Richard Ekins at the centre, and their ties to far-right figures like Adrian Vermeule at Harvard. To ground the argument, he uses the 2024 Rwanda Act as a concrete case study. It's a heavy set of themes — the rule of law, the influence of 1930s political thought on modern legal theory, and the intersection of law and democracy — so if you've been following the debate around the Rwanda Act, this is a good chance to hear the argument laid out in person.

It's a mid-afternoon session, 14:00 to 16:00, in the Moot Court Room at Old College, Edinburgh Law School.