Research Group on Constitutional Studies, McGill University
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Research Group on Constitutional Studies, McGill University
@rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
6.1K followers 62 following 360 posts
McGill University Research Group on Constitutional Studies, a unit of the Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom & Global Orders in the Ancient & Modern Worlds
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rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
McGill students with interests in the history of political thought/ intellectual history/ international law/ political philosophy. Don't miss this event on Thursday!

A student who registers here and attends will win a copy of Lee's book The Right of Sovereignty

www.facebook.com/events/25000...
November 18, 2025 at 3:56 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Register here to attend Daniel Lee's upcoming RGCS Lecture for a chance to win a copy of his book _The Right of Sovereignty_

www.facebook.com/events/25000...
November 5, 2025 at 1:52 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Today!
October 30, 2025 at 1:31 PM
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We're celebrating this week with lectures by the two distinguished academics who have served as the external members on our Board.
October 28, 2025 at 11:36 AM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Tristan Hughes, Student Fellowship alum BA '17, now a postdoc at UBC, has a new article in the European Journal of Political Theory:

"The political theory of techno-colonialism"

doi.org/10.1177/1474...
Abstract This paper examines an ideology I call techno-colonialism. I argue that techno-colonialism represents an attempt to selectively reproduce settler colonial practices adjusted to twenty-first century realities. This argument has implications for contemporary settler colonialism, the radical right, and climate change politics. In what follows, I discuss the techno-colonial doctrines of Nick Land, Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, and Patri Friedman. These figures articulate a political theory about exploiting new technologies to escape the state and found new societies. To explore techno-colonial ideology, I focus on Seasteading—the practice of creating floating city-states to colonize the ocean––as an attempted realization of techno-colonial ideals. As I claim, techno-colonialism attempts to humanize the politics of settlement. But I argue that techno-colonialism's ambitions fail, and techno-colonialism fails to create a harmless politics of settlement. I conclude that we should be attentive to the relations of political and economic power in which such exit projects are embedded. Moreover, this paper also promotes our understanding of climate change and the radical right's politics. While scholars most naturally associate the radical right with climate change denialism, the techno-colonists illustrate another possibility. They welcome catastrophe, and see rising-sea levels as an opportunity to start society afresh.
October 24, 2025 at 4:17 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
New from RGCS alum Erin Crandall (PhD '13), Associate Professor of Politics at Acadia, and coauthors Andrea Lawlor and Shauna Hughey, in the Canadian Journal of Political Science

"Negative Spotlight: Event-Driven Effects on Support for the Canadian Supreme Court"

doi.org/10.1017/S000...
Abstract Longstanding public support for the Supreme Court of Canada is well-documented and contributes to its public legitimacy. However, the sources of this support and how vulnerable it may be to political factors or negative coverage of events are not well understood. In February of 2023, Justice Russell Brown took a leave of absence from the Supreme Court following a conduct complaint under review by the Canadian Judicial Council. Justice Brown retired from the bench in June of that year, before the CJC concluded its investigation. In the intervening period, media coverage of the events that prompted the attention from the CJC thrust the Court into the spotlight. Using data from an original two-wave survey experiment (n = 1,222) from May and November of 2023, we investigate whether perspectives toward the circumstances surrounding Brown’s retirement hurt perceptions of the Court’s legitimacy. We find that the event did not disrupt support for the Court over time but also point to the ways in which opinion toward the Court changed pre- and post-resignation. These findings suggest that support toward Canada’s high court is at present largely stable even in the case of negative coverage of a high-profile event. However, we also acknowledge the potential vulnerabilities that negative coverage of the Court may present.
October 3, 2025 at 10:56 AM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
This Friday!

Geoffrey Sigalet
(RGCS MA & postdoc alum)
Director of the UBC Research Group for Constitutional Law
Assistant Professor of Political Science, UBC (Okanagan)

Notwithstanding Judicial Review

October 3, 2025, 2:30 pm
Stephen Scott Seminar Room, Old Chancellor Day Hall 16
October 1, 2025 at 5:11 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Now available!

By former RGCS postdoc Xavier Boileau

Multiculturalisme, impérialisme et culture: Repenser les enjeux culturels canadiens à l’aune de l’histoire impériale

2025, Presses de l'Université du Québec

Book launch: Nov. 12, 6- 8 pm, Librairie Le Port de Tête, 269 ave. du Mont-Royal E
October 1, 2025 at 12:41 PM
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New from MA/ PhD alum
@rygriff.bsky.social
Ryan Griffiths

"For the Credit of the Sect: Adam Smith's Political Theory of Association"

in _Freedom of Association, vol. 2: Applied_, Luke Sheehan and Kenneth McIntyre eds., Palgrave

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
September 27, 2025 at 1:32 AM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
10th Anniversary of the Lin Centre Oct 30

Political theorist Jill Frank (McGill BA '83 BCL/ LLB '87) "Crafting Order: Plato and the Shape of Democracy," 1-2:30

Historian Steven Pincus, "The South Asian Origins of American Independence: Empire, Political Economy, and Partisan Politics," 3-4:30
September 25, 2025 at 1:37 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
#APSA2025 Sunday 8 am panels!
September 14, 2025 at 3:13 PM
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New book w chapters coauthored by RGCS alums Erin Crandall (PhD '13), (Acadia), and Kate Puddister (PhD '11), (Guelph).

Emmett Macfarlane @emmettmacfarlane.com , ed., Rights and Parliamentary Systems in Canada and Beyond, University of Toronto Press, 2025.

utppublishing.com/doi/book/10....
September 12, 2025 at 3:52 PM
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Some of today's #APSA2025 panels with RGCS students or alums presenting papers. See the whole schedule at

www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/files/r...
September 12, 2025 at 3:39 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
RGCS students and alumni presenting at #APSA2025 today!
September 11, 2025 at 3:47 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
This locally-curated library is 100% not approved by any legislator, board, or officially designated librarian.

bsky.app/profile/fran...
August 9, 2025 at 2:00 AM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
New from Student Fellowship alum Emma Ebowe BA ‘18, now Assistant Professor of Government & Africana Studies at William & Mary, in the American Journal of Political Science:

"Injustice, relational violence, and the foster system"

doi.org/10.1111/ajps...
"Injustice, relational violence, and the foster system" Abstract Political theorists have not paid sustained attention to the foster system or treated it as a political institution. Despite this, scholars and social movement advocates have identified the system as a site of social and political injustice. This paper develops an account of racial, class, and relational injustice in the contemporary US foster system and provides an ethical framework for evaluating moral harms to intimate relationships. I propose the novel ethical concept of relational violence, which I suggest occurs when an external force damages an intimate bond by substantially disrupting an intimate relationship. Relational violence is generally wrong, and we have moral reasons to avoid it. But in the foster system, poverty, housing insecurity, and racial prejudice can lead to unnecessary relational violence through child removals. The foster system, then, emerges as an unjust institution that can compound the existing harms of racial and economic inequality with painful relational injustices.
August 6, 2025 at 11:22 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Four new dissertations added to the collection in Ferrier!

(Color change due to switching to a higher-quality bookbinder.)
July 8, 2025 at 4:22 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
New from Student Fellowship alum Théophile Deslauriers (2016-17, BA '17) in History of Political Thought

"Edward Carpenter, Ethical Socialism and the Formation of Labour's Identity"

doi.org/10.53765/205...
Abstract: This paper aims to make a contribution to the intellectual history of social egalitarian democratic theory and to show its influence on the British Labour Party. It does so by reconstructing ethical socialism's democratic theory, as expressed by Edward Carpenter (1844‐1929), ethical socialism's most prominent exponent, and tracing Carpenter's influence on Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister. The paper argues that Carpenter's distinct contribution to the Labour Party's ideas about democracy, and to social egalitarian theories of democracy more broadly, was his attempt to reconcile an ethical vision of democracy with support for representative government. This paper recovers the importance of ethical socialism and sexual liberation for the development of democratic theory on the British Left, and for the shaping of the Labour Party's conception of its role as a socialist party in a mass democracy during its rise to prominence.
June 20, 2025 at 6:29 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Geoffrey Sigalet (Student Fellow 2010-11, postdoc 2019-21, now UBC Okanagan) and Dave Snow, "Notwithstanding Centralism: The Resurgence of the Notwithstanding Clause and the Conservative Provincial Rights Movement"

doi.org/10.1017/S000...
Abstract After 30 years of relative neglect, Canada’s notwithstanding clause has been invoked in six different provincial laws since 2018. We argue that this resurgence can be explained by the growing judicial invalidation of provincial statutes and federal-provincial partisan conflicts. Drawing from an original dataset of Charter cases decided by the Supreme Court of Canada (1982–2020), we show that provincial statutes have been invalidated at much higher rates since 2010. We also show how increasing partisan conflicts between conservative provincial governments and the Liberal federal government have helped frame the notwithstanding clause as a partisan tool for resisting centralizing rights decisions. The strategic environment facing provinces has shifted as partisan federalism conflicts lower the political costs of using the clause, while rising invalidation rates incentivize provinces to use it to protect their jurisdiction. This supports the “regime politics” understanding of judicial power as partly a function of federal (central) regime power.
June 10, 2025 at 2:44 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Two new CJPS @cjps-rcsp.bsky.social articles by RGCS alums:

Robert Sparling (postdoc 2010-12, now University of Ottawa): "Contracts, Treaties and Relationships: Collective Debt, Collective Responsibility and Contractarian Confusions"

doi.org/10.1017/S000...
Abstract Aaron Mills (2017) has argued persuasively that to understand treaty relationships as contracts is to betray the spirit of those relationships. In this, he joins numerous Indigenous scholars who express wariness of contractualist understandings of treaty. This article inquires into the distinction between contractualist and relational understandings of treaty in order to think about the phenomenon of collective, transhistorical debt. Drawing out the distinction between relational and contractarian modes of thinking about long-term collective obligations, the article examines whether ongoing historical debts to Indigenous nations can be made sense of on a Kantian, contractarian logic. It concludes that the widespread colonial incomprehension of treaty as understood by many Indigenous nations was and remains tied to contractarian confusions. While contractarian thought can serve as a heuristic for articulating the injustices of colonial dispossession, it cannot capture the type of long-term collective responsibilities that treaties are supposed to represent.
June 10, 2025 at 2:42 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
RGCS at @cpsa-acsp.bsky.social
H01(a) - Radical and Critical Political Economy Jun 3 | Time: 08:30am to 10:00am Nietzsche’s Debt: Values, Sovereignty, and the Identity of the State: Robert Sparling H02(a) - Reaching across worlds: political epistemology, coloniality, and pluriversality Jun 3 | Time: 10:15am to 11:45am Rethinking how to Think about Thought: Elsewheres, Appropriation, Attunement: Didier Zúñiga A Great Ox Sits in Your Mind: Decolonial Cautions about Epistemic Reparations and the Right to be Known: Yann Allard-Tremblay H04(a) - Author Meets Critics Session: Land and the Liberal Project - Canada’s Violent Expansion Jun 3 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm Didier Zúñiga, Éléna Choquette H04(b) - Emotions, Affect, and Belonging in Politics Jun 3 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm Pathologizing Victims: a Defense of Structural Resentment: Robert Spadidakis H04(d) - Democratic Theory and Practice I Jun 3 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm Multinational federalism: some unresolved tensions: Xavier Boileau H05(b) - Classical Political Thought Jun 3 | Time: 03:30pm to 05:00pm Political Friendship in the Lysis and the Republic: Giving to Each What is Due: Lucas Jerusalimiec H09(a) - Colonialism and Empire in the History of Political Thought Jun 4 | 8:30- 10:00am Montesquieu’s Liberal Empire: Conquest and Doux Commerce: Robert Spadidakis H16(b) - Indigenous Democratic Theory Jun 5 | Time: 08:30am to 10:00am The Democratic Legitimacy of Unelected Indigenous Governments: Daniel Sherwin H19(b) - Political Theory and Epistemology Jun 5 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm The Principle of Pooh: Reading Children’s Literature as Political Theory: Martha Pitre
June 4, 2025 at 4:22 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Recent McGill Political Science PhD and RGCS PhD Fellow Sasha Lleshaj @sashall.bsky.social is one of the three finalists for the Canadian Political Science Association's Vincent Lemieux Prize for best dissertation. Congratulations and good luck!

files.constantcontact.com/9a690f8c601/...
Sashenka Lleshaj (PhD completed at McGill University), “The Politics of Contested Heritage: Memory, Place, and Power in Post-Communist Albania” This dissertation investigates the politics of contested heritage in contemporary Albanian politics, in particular the way that political attempts at creating a new narrative about the history and meaning of the Albanian nation engages with art, infrastructure, and national symbols. The dissertation relies on solid empirical research and is both theoretically innovative and thought-provoking. Sashenka Lleshaj (Doctorat complété à McGill University), « The Politics of Contested Heritage: Memory, Place, and Power in Post-Communist Albania » Cette thèse de doctorat examine la politique en matière d’héritage contesté dans l’Albanie d’aujourd’hui et plus précisément la manière dont les tentatives politiques de créer un nouveau récit à propos de l'histoire et de la signification de la nation albanaise interagit avec l'art, les infrastructures et les symboles nationaux. S'appuyant sur de solides recherches empiriques, cette thèse se distingue par l’originalité de son plan théorique et donne à réfléchir
May 8, 2025 at 8:00 PM
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RGCS student writing prize, deadline today, full info in screenshot and alt text.
The Research Group on Constitutional Studies will award a prize for the best piece of substantial academic writing from a current Arts undergraduate on the foundations, principles, and institutions of a free society. The prize will be $500. The competition is open with respect to methodology and the eligible scope of the subject matter will be interpreted broadly. "Substantial academic writing" will most often mean a thesis or a research term paper of 5000 words or more, though shorter papers will be considered. Papers may be nominated by faculty or submitted directly by students. They should be e-mailed in pdf format to RGCS.McGill@gmail.com by 5 pm on April 28, in duplicate: one pdf without identifying information, one with. Students who submit papers that have been written for a class should indicate the course's number, title, and instructor name on the copy that includes identifying information.
April 28, 2025 at 4:23 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
RGCS will again host the summer student seminar for our partners at @instituteforliberalstudies this year. For those with the right sense of fun— described in their poster— it's a lot of fun. Applications are due April 30.

www.liberalstudies.ca/freedom-week/
application poster for Institute for Liberal Studies Freedom Week.
April 28, 2025 at 12:41 PM
rgcs-mcgill.bsky.social
Starting today!

www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/ptps/20...
April 25, 2025 at 11:29 AM