Dr. David Kenny

Dr David Kenny is an Associate Professor of Law in the Law School, teaching Irish and comparative constitutional law, conflict of laws, critical legal theory and law and literature. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Harvard Law School, and the Honourable Society of the King's Inns, and is an alumnus of the US State Department's Fulbright programme. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2021. Dr Kenny's research specialises in Irish and comparative constitutional law. He is co-author of the 5th edition of Kelly: the Irish Constitution, the leading text on Irish Constitutional Law, as well as many peer-reviewed articles in leading national and international journals on topics such as proportionality, constitutional culture, referendums, and executive branch legal advisors, and the constitutional implications of Brexit for Ireland. He also researches widely in the field of law and literature. He is currently writing a book drawing together law, literature, and philosophical pragmatism entitled 'Pragmatism in Law and Literature', to be published by Routledge in 2024. Dr Kenny has given expert evidence on constitutional issues to the Citizen's Assembly, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice and Defence, and the Oireachtas Special Covid-19 Committee. He was a member of the Working Group on Unification Referendums on the Island of Ireland which reported in 2021, convened by the Constitution Unit of University College London and supported by funding from the British Academy and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. He served as coordinator of the State Governance section of the Trinity College Dublin Covid-19 Legal Observatory and co-authored a major report on the human rights impact of COVID-19 response measures for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission in 2021. He served as a facilitator for the Northern Ireland Assembly Ad Hoc Committee on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. He also worked with the Centre of Constitutional Democracy at IU Bloomington and the US National Committee on North Korea in 2021 to compile a report on constitutionalism on the Korean Peninsula. He is currently a co-ordinator of NSLMap, a project funded by the Shared Island United to map the convergences and divergences in various areas of law between Ireland and Northern Ireland. He has also, since 2020, worked with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission to develop a policy on constitutional change in respect of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Dr Kenny currently teaches Constitutional Law; Critical Perspectives on Law; Conflict of Laws; and Law and Literature. He was a recipient of the Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015. Dr Kenny regularly contributed to media discussion of constitutional issues, referendums, and Brexit, having written articles in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and theJournal.ie, and appearing on Morning Ireland, the Six One News, Prime Time, Sky News and the BBC, amongst others. He is open to media queries on matters of Irish or international constitutional law.

  Comparative Constitutional Law   Conflict of Laws   Constitutional Law   Irish Politics   Referendums