GRAZIELLA ROMEO

I teach comparative public law and elective courses of advanced constitutional law. In my teaching I explore the recognition of fundamental rights in both theoretical and historical perspective. In 2016, I’ve created the course Citizenship and Migration Law, while in 2020 I’ve contributed to the development of the course Gender Law and Women’s Rights as part of a broader commitment to advancing diversity awareness. My experience in teaching and researching on socially debated topics is condensed in a co-taught course on Methodology in legal research where I explore, along with other colleagues, the challenges of doing research in a multidisciplinary fashion.

I’m Graziella Romeo and I’m Associate Professor at Bocconi University.

I’m co-editor in chief of Bocconi Legal Papers Research Series and, starting from September 2021, I’m stream lead on Democracy, Solidarity and Governance in Europe within Bocconi Lab for European Studies.

I’m also running a COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) project on Global Digital Human Rights, aimed at advancing the protection of fundamental rights in the digital era. Check it out on: https://gdhrnet.eu/

A new paper will be published soon: G. Romeo, A material understanding of constitutional changes: Revisiting 'constitutional maintenance' doctrines, in M. Goldoni, M. Wilkinson, The Cambridge Handbook of the Material Constitution, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. This paper intends to contribute to studies of material constitutionalism by applying Mortati’s concept of the material constitution to theories of constitutional change. In particular, it focusses on ‘constitutional maintenance’ doctrines elaborated in continental Europe to explain cases of limited and/or substantively guided constitutional changes that generally elude formal amendment procedures. It argues that while constitutional maintenance doctrines capture one of the functions of the theory of the material constitution, namely, to guide constitutional changes, they fall into a logical contradiction by a) observing constitutional changes on the basis of mismatches between constitutional practice and the master-text constitution and b) supporting the need to minimise those mismatches.

I have recently obtained a grant from Fondazione Cariplo as the principle investigator on the project  "Aligning with Law Family Arrangements: Non-traditional Families’ Contribution to Addressing Italy’s Demographic Crisis” (ALFA).

I do research on constitutional theory and comparative constitutional law. I’m interested in the interplay between political and judicial recognition of fundamental rights. Therefore, I explored arguments put forward by constitutional and supreme courts to justify the recognition of rights in a comparative perspective. I’ve applied my methodological approach to the migrants’ rights as well as to women’s rights. More recently, I’ve focused my research on social foundations of constitutional rules also by exploring constitutional cultures.