David Vitale

Associate Professor

Research Ethics Adviser
Co-Director of Centre for Constitutions in Context (CCC)

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

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Scholarship

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I am Associate Professor as well as a founding co-director of the Centre for Constitutions in ContextLink opens in a new window at Warwick Law School (with Dr Mara Malagodi)Link opens in a new window.

I research in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law, and human rights. Informed by my training in both law and psychology, as well as my international professional experience, I adopt interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives to studying these areas of law.

I am 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. My work has been published or is forthcoming in leading journals, including the Cambridge Law Journal, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Studies, and Global Constitutionalism.

In my latest monograph - Trust, Courts and Social Rights: A Trust-Based Framework for Social Rights EnforcementLink opens in a new window - published by Cambridge University Press in 2024, in the Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law series, I propose an innovative legal framework for judicially enforcing social rights that is rooted in public trust in government. My monograph has been cited at length by the Supreme Court of Nepal in a 2024 landmark judgment, with the Court relying on the trust-based framework to order its government to take comprehensive steps to improve mental healthcare nationally.

Currently, I am also the UK Principal Investigator for a £750,000 multi-institution, Trans-Atlantic Platform project (2025-2027) titled "Open Constitutional Democracy: Reconciling Deliberation and Constitutional DemocracyLink opens in a new window" (with co-Principal Investigators Professor Michael Pal (University of Ottawa) and Dr Odile Ammann (University of Lausanne)), funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Bio

I hold law degrees from the UK, the US, and Canada. I have 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. I also hold an Honours Bachelor of Science (BSc (Hons)) in Psychology from the University of Toronto.

I joined Warwick as an Assistant Professor in 2018. Prior to that, I worked in various positions across the globe, including as postdoctoral researcher at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions in Haifa, Israel, as judicial clerk to the Justices of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Israel, as researcher with the Center for Constitutional Transitions at NYU Law, and as a practising lawyer with two law firms in Toronto. I am also a member of the Law Society of Ontario (Canada) (Barrister and Solicitor) (called in 2008).

Publications

Selected Publications

Books

Trust, Courts and Social Rights: A Trust-Based Framework for Social Rights EnforcementLink opens in a new window (Cambridge University Press 2024)

Journal Articles

"Reimagining the Trust Conception of Legitimate ExpectationsLink opens in a new window" (2025) The Cambridge Law Journal 397-430
"Public Trust and the Populist Leader: A Theoretical ArgumentLink opens in a new window" (2022) Global Constitutionalism 548-570 (with Raphaël Girard)
"The Relational Impact of Social Rights Judgments: A Trust-Based AnalysisLink opens in a new window" (2022) Legal Studies 408-424
"A Trust Network Model for Social Rights FulfilmentLink opens in a new window" (2018) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 706-732
"Political Trust as the Basis for a Social Rights Enforcement FrameworkLink opens in a new window" (2018) Queen's Law Journal 177-220
"The Value of Dissent in Constitutional Adjudication: A Context-Specific AnalysisLink opens in a new window" (2014) Review of Constitutional Studies 83-108
"Can We Afford It?: Ethical Consideration of Expensive Drug Treatment for Neonates and InfantsLink opens in a new window" (2009) Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics 587-589

Book Reviews

Review of Raquel Barradas de Freitas and Sergio Lo Iacono (eds), Trust Matters: Cross-Disciplinary Essays (Bloomsbury 2021)Link opens in a new window (2023) Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought 243-250
Review of Katie Boyle, Economic and Social Rights Law: Incorporation, Justiciability and Principles of Adjudication (Routledge 2020) (2021) Public Law 845-848

Reports

"Minority Rights in Culturally Diverse SocietiesLink opens in a new window" (2014) The Center for Constitutional Transitions, Meeting the Challenges of Emerging Constitutional Democracy Working Paper Series 1-14 (with George Anderson and Sujit Choudhry)

For more details on my publications, see here.Link opens in a new window

Projects

Open Constitutional Democracy

I am the UK Principal Investigator for a £750,000 multi-institution, Trans-Atlantic Platform project (2025-2027) 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. The project is a collaboration with Professor Michael Pal (University of Ottawa) and Dr Odile Ammann (University of Lausanne). It explores the crucial question of how contemporary theories of deliberative democracy can be reconciled with foundational constitutional institutions, including judicial review, the separation of powers, and bills of rights.

International Rule of Law in Context

In 2022, I was awarded as co-Principal Investigator (with 5 others from the UK, Slovenia, and Sweden) a EUTOPIA Connected Research Communities Incubator grant worth €24,000 to organise a conference in Gothenburg on the "International Rule of Law in Context", assembling an esteemed group of scholars and practitioners.

Media Impact

Legal or Policy Change

In a 2024 landmark judgment, the Supreme Court of Nepal cited at length my monograph, Trust, Courts and Social Rights: A Trust-Based Framework for Social Rights Enforcement, ordering the government to take comprehensive steps to improve mental healthcare nationally (Matrika Devkota & Sharmila Parajuli for KOSHISH v Government of Nepal et al (Writ N. 077-WO-0035), 2 December 2024)).

Public Understanding

In 2025, I was interviewed by the blog African Law MattersLink opens in a new window about my monograph, Trust, Courts and Social Rights: A Trust-Based Framework for Social Rights Enforcement
In 2019, I wrote a blogpost for the UK Constitutional Law Association Blog titled "Leaving the EU: A Matter of Trust?Link opens in a new window", in which I discussed the relevance of the concept of trust to discourses around Brexit

Culture

In 2021, I participated in the Feelings of Freedom Festival as part of the Resonate Festival/Coventry U.K. City of Culture. I delivered a provocation titled "Can We Trust Our Government to Take Care of Us?" in which I 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

Teaching Research Supervision