Tom is the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he also directs centers focused on institutional and legal integrity and free inquiry. He specializes in comparative and international law, with an emphasis on constitutional design and a regional focus on East Asia. Tom co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, a National Science Foundation–funded effort to collect and analyze the constitutions of all independent nation-states since 1789. Before entering academia, he served as a legal adviser at the Iran–U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague and has since advised numerous international organizations and governments on constitutional and legal reform. He holds a B.A., J.D., and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Tom is the author of influential works such as Democracies and International Law and How to Save a Constitutional Democracy, and his research has helped shape both scholarship and policy debates around the rule of law and democratic resilience.
