WG Hart Legal Workshop

Held annually at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London) the WG Hart Workshop is one of the largest, best supported and best regarded legal workshops in Europe. The 2010 workshop had a comparative constitutional theme and, not surprisingly it attracted some of the world’s foremost authorities on Constitutional law. This issue of the European Journal of Law Reform hosts articles which were originally presented as papers in the 2010 Hart Workshop. It is a feature of Hart Workshops (some call it a curse, others call it a blessing) that the papers delivered are as diverse as possible – both theoretically and empirically – and hopefully this issue of the EJLR reflects just this diversity. From the prospects of central European constitutionalism to the symbolic role of the head of state and from the quest of a ‘just distance’ between citizens and the public power to supranational Court conversations between Europe and Latin America this issue has enough diversity to satisfy even the most discerning reader of constitutional law. From Dworkin to Laughlin and from Hobbes to Sarkozy, the theoretical and empirical parameters that the authors have tackled are varied, original and exciting.

As one of the four academic directors of the 2010 WG Hart Workshop – along with Martin Laughlin (LSE), Dawn Oliver (UCL) and Helen Xanthaki (IALS) – it was my pleasure and honour to select articles for inclusion in the EJLR. In fact, selecting articles from the workshop has been a very easy and very enjoyable task because of the quality and quantity that was on offer.