The University of Milan awarded an honorary degree in Law to Bruce Ackerman

The University of Milan conferred an honorary degree in Law on Bruce Ackerman. The ceremony was held in the Board Room of the Via Festa del Perdono 7 campus, and live-streamed on the University’s YouTube Channel @UnimiVideo.  

Elio Franzini, Rector of the University, and Prof. Chiara Amalfitano, Head of the Department of Italian and Supranational Public Law, gave the opening remarks, followed by a laudatio by Nicolò Zanon, Vice President of the Constitutional Court. After that, Bruce Ackerman delivered a lecture entitled “The Postmodern Predicament: The Shattering Challenges Posed by the High-Tech Revolution”.

These were the Rector’s words while conferring the honorary degree: “The University of Milan awards an honorary degree in Law to Bruce Arnold Ackerman, Sterling Professor at Yale University, for having contributed to the development of American and comparative constitutional law by analysing the transformations undergone by constitutional systems, both from a historical and philosophical perspective, and by introducing new concepts and interpretations, which are now part of the constitutional doctrine at the global level.”

Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. He won the Henry Phillips Prize in 2002 for We the People (2000), a three-volume book in which he developed the theory of the great “constitutional moments” in American constitutional history. He is the author of 19 books in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy, including Before the Next Attack (2006), which served as a basis for the reform of the French constitution dealing with emergency powers, and his most recent book, Revolutionary Constitutions (2019), which compares the post-war constitutional experience of France, India, Iran, Italy, Israel, Poland, South Africa, and the United States.