David Vitale

Associate Professor

Research Ethics

Constitutional Law (Domestic and Comparative); Administrative Law; Social and Economic Rights; Populism; Public Trust in Government

School of Law
S1.27, Social Sciences Building
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

024 765 73844

Scholarship

David's research interests are in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law and human rights. He is especially interested in the idea of public trust in government, including what it means, how it functions and how it can be used to advance public law. David's work has been published in top-ranked journals, including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Studies, Public Law, Global Constitutionalism and Queen's Law Journal.

In his latest monograph - Trust, Courts and Social RightsLink opens in a new window - published by Cambridge University Press in 2024 as part of the Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law series, David proposes an innovative legal framework for judicially enforcing social rights that is rooted in public trust in government.

David is also the UK Principal Investigator for a multi-institution, Trans-Atlantic Platform project titled "Open Constitutional Democracy: Reconciling Deliberation and Constitutional DemocracyLink opens in a new window", funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

David's research is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on, and importing into public law, ideas from psychology, sociology, philosophy and political theory. Additionally, his work is comparative/global in nature, incorporating illustrations (cases, legislation, constitutions) from various jurisdictions.

Bio

David holds law degrees from the UK, the US and Canada. He has a PhD in Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an LLM (Legal Theory) from New York University (NYU) School of Law and an LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. He also completed an Erasmus exchange at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence in 2014. Additionally, David holds an Honours Bachelor of Science (BSc (Hons)) in Psychology from the University of Toronto.

David joined Warwick as an Assistant Professor in October 2018. Prior to that, he held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions in Haifa, Israel. David has also worked as a judicial clerk to the Justices of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Israel, has conducted research with the Center for Constitutional Transitions and practised as a litigator with two law firms in Toronto. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2008.

Publications

'Vitale, David, 'Girard, Raphaël, 2022. 'Public trust and the populist leader : a theoretical argument. Global Constitutionalism
'Vitale, David, 2022. 'The relational impact of social rights judgments : a trust-based analysis. Legal Studies, 42 (3), pp. 408-424
Vitale, David, 2018. Political trust as the basis for a social rights enforcement framework. Queen's Law Journal, 44 (1), pp. 177-220
Vitale, David, 2018. A trust network model for social rights fulfilment. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 38 (4), pp. 706-732
Vitale, David, 2014. The value of dissent in constitutional adjudication : a context-specific analysis. Review of Constitutional Studies, 19 (1), pp. 83-108

Vitale, David, 2024. Trust, Courts and Social Rights : a trust-based framework for social rights enforcement. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Vitale, David, 2023. Review of Trust matters : cross-disciplinary essays edited by Barradas de Freitas, R. and Lo Iacono, S.. Jurisprudence : An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought, Routledge
Vitale, David, 2021. Review of Economic and Social Rights Law: Incorporation, Justiciability and Principles of Adjudication, by Boyle, K.. Public Law, Sweet & Maxwell Ltd, pp. 845-848

Teaching Impact

Public Understanding

In 2019, David wrote a blogpost for the UK Constitutional Law Association blog entitled "Leaving the EU: A Matter of Trust?" in which, drawing on the literature on the concept of trust from various disciplines, he questioned the UK Government's reliance on trust in relation to its plans regarding Brexit: https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2019/04/09/david-vitale-leaving-the-eu-a-matter-of-trust

Culture

In 2021, David participated in the Feelings of Freedom Festival as part of the Resonate Festival/Coventry U.K. City of Culture. He delivered a provocation entitled "Can We Trust Our Government to Take Care of Us?" in which he explored with the audience what it means for us to "trust our government" with matters such as the management of COVID-19 and the delivery of social or public housing, and whether the law, including the courts, can promote this trust.

International Organisations

Research Supervision Social Media