Tom is a Professor and Director of Research Impact at Melbourne Law School, Director of the Electoral Regulation Research Network (ERRN), Co-Convenor of the Constitution Transformation Network (Melbourne Law School), and Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law.

Tom’s research focuses on three transnational challenges for democracy: democratic regression across world regions; the evolving roles of national and transnational democratic guardians; and enhancing democratic resilience through constitutional and institutional design. His multidisciplinary work seeks to forge connections between the Global North and Global South, blending normative theory, conceptual development, and comparative methodology, including unorthodox transnational comparison and cross-regional comparison.

Tom has written widely on democratic crisis and democracy-building, including a monograph, The Alchemists: Questioning Our Faith in Courts as Democracy-Builders (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and recent articles on democratic decay as a field, democratic crisis in states including Brazil and Poland, and focus on democratic actors like courts, political parties, and citizens. His most recent focus on constitutional repair after democratic backsliding includes a new article (July 2025) in the American Journal of Comparative Law: ‘Constitutional Repair: A Comparative Theory’.

An Irish citizen, he was educated in Ireland, France, Italy and the UK. His policy and consultant work has addressed a wide range of states and world regions. Highlights include leading a €3m judicial ethics project for the Council of Europe in Turkey, designing a pan-continental African Judicial Network for the African Union, and authoring a landmark report for International IDEA on countering democratic backsliding in Asia.

My interest in democratic crisis has been strongly influenced by my wide-ranging experience in the public sector, academia, and as a consultant. My first inklings of what is called 'democratic decay' here were during my time representing the Supreme Court of Ireland on the Venice Commission's body for constitutional courts (the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice) from 2008-2011. The system of dealing with research requests from participating courts began to hint at some potentially serious problems during this time. This worsened during my time as consultant editor of the Venice Commission's Bulletin on Constitutional Case-Law (which provides case-law summaries from 61 states) from 2011-2018.

My awareness of the issue also grew as I wrote my first book on courts as 'democracy-builders', which focused on Brazil as a central case-study from a broad comparative and global perspective  encompassing Latin America, Europe and Africa. I can now discern democratic decay as a clear thread in the book — although it was not written from this angle. Since 2015, as well as actively researching the area, my awareness of the problem has been enhanced by managing a major €3m Council of Europe project on strengthening judicial ethics in Turkey,  designing an African Judicial Network for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, which sharpened my knowledge of the state of democratic governance across the African Union, and my work with the Constitution Transformation Network at Melbourne Law School, which has enhanced my existing knowledge of democratic governance across the Asia-Pacific region developed through working on legal and constitutional reform projects in states including Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

• TG Daly and D Samararatne (eds), Democratic Consolidation and Constitutional Endurance in Asia and Africa: Comparing Uneven Pathways (Oxford University Press, 2024).

• TG Daly and W Sadurski (eds), Democracy 2020: Assessing Constitutional Decay, Breakdown, and Renewal Worldwide (International Association of Constitutional Law, Conference e-book, 2020).

• P Fortes, L Boratti, A Palacios and TG Daly (eds), Law and Policy in Latin America: Transforming Courts, Institutions, and Rights (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

• (with Dinesha Samararatne), ‘Decolonising Comparative Constitutional Law (and Democratisation Studies)?’ in TG Daly and D Samararatne (eds), Democratic Consolidation and Constitutional Endurance in Asia and Africa: Comparing Uneven Pathways (Oxford University Press, 2024).

• ‘The Pandemic and the Future of Global Democracy’ in J Grogan and A Donald (eds), Routledge Handbook on Law and the COVID-19 Pandemic (Routledge, 2022).

• ‘Diagnosing Democratic Decay in Non-Paradigm Cases’ in PH Villas Boas, C Barbosa and B Lamenha (eds), Populismo, Constitucionalismo Populista, Jurisdição Populista e Crise na Democracia (Tramento, 2021) .

• ‘Breaking Down the Meaning of Constitutional Breakdown’ in U Belavusau and A Gliszczyńska-Grabias (eds), Constitutionalism under Stress: Essays in Honour of Wojciech Sadurski (Oxford University Press, 2020).

• ‘Assessing Constitutional Decay, Breakdown, and Renewal Worldwide’. Constitutional Studies vol. 8.

Relevant articles include:

• ‘Constitutional Repair: A Comparative Theory’American Journal of Comparative Law. Published online: 24 July 2025.

• (2022) 23(8) German Law Journal 1071-1103.

• (with Brian Christopher Jones), ‘Parties versus Democracy: Addressing Today’s Political-Party Threats to Democratic Rule’ (2020) 18(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 509-538.

• ‘Designing the Democracy-Defending Citizen’ (2020) 6 Constitutional Studies 189-215.Special issue on ‘Constitutional Decline, Constitutional Design, and Lawyerly Hubris’.

• ‘Understanding Multi-Directional Democratic Decay: Lessons from the Rise of Bolsonaro in Brazil’ (2020) 14(2) Law and Ethics on Human Rights 199-226. Special issue on ‘Democratic Backsliding and Human Rights’.

• ‘Illiberal Democracy: Time to Stop Using a Problematic Term?’ (2019) 2 Percorsi Costituzionali 273-298. Special issue on ‘Constitutional Oxymorons’.

• ‘Democratic Decay: Conceptualising an Emerging Research Field’ (2019) 11(1) Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 9-36.

Relevant book reviews include:

• TG Daly, ‘Decolonisation and Democracy: Constitutional Dreaming, Revolution, or Threat?’ World Comparative Law. 3,877 words. Invited contributor.

• TG Daly, Book Review: Swati Jhaveri, Tarunabh Khaitan and Dinesha Samararatne (eds), Constitutional Resilience in South Asia (Hart Publishing, 2023) Indian Law Review. Published online: 18 December 2024. 61-11. Invited contributor.

• TG Daly, Book Review: Kevin Tan and Ridwanul Hoque (eds), Constitutional Foundings in South Asia (Hart, 2021) (2023) 24(2) Australian Journal of Asian Law 133-135. 1,357 words. Invited contributor.

• TG Daly, Book Response: ‘Courts and the Global Search for Democratic Resilience’, response to Ros Dixon, Responsive Judicial Review: Democracy and Dysfunction in the Modern Age (Oxford University Press, 2023) 34(2) National Law School of India Review 26-34. Invited contributor.

• TG Daly, Book Review: Mark Tushnet, The New Fourth Branch: Institutions for Protecting Constitutional Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2021) (2022) 20(3) International Journal of Constitutional Law 1423-1430. Invited contributor.

• TG Daly, Book Review: ‘Capturing the complexity of constitutional erosion and resilience in Brazil’, review of Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer, Constitutional Erosion in Brazil (Hart, 2021) (2022) 2(1) Suprema: Revista de estudos constitucionais 479-494. Invited contributor.

• TG Daly, Book Review: Francesco Biagi, European Constitutional Courts and Transitions to Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2019) (2021) 46(1) European Law Review 117-123. Invited contributor.

• TG Daly, Debate contribution: ‘Post-Juristocracy, Democratic Decay, and the Limits of Gardbaum’s Valuable Theory’ (2020) 18(4) International Journal of Constitutional Law 1474-1482. Invited contributor.

• TG Daly, Book Review: ‘Between Fear and Hope: Poland’s Democratic Lessons for Europe (and Beyond)’. Review of Wojciech Sadurski, Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown (OUP, 2019) (2019) 15(4) European Constitutional Law Review 752-767.

• ‘Populism, Public Law, and Democratic Decay in Brazil: Understanding the Rise of Jair Bolsonaro’

  ‘Democratic Backsliding and Human Rights’ conference, College of Law and Business, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2-3 January 2019.

• ‘Populism, Elitism and Democratic Decay in Brazil’

  I-CON Conference, 26 June 2018, Panel on 'Populist Challenges to Liberal Constitutionalism II'

• ‘Illiberal Democracy: Pinning Down a Problematic Concept’

  International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) World Congress, 19 June 2018

• ‘Diagnosing Democratic Decay’

  Comparative Constitutional Law Round-table, Gilbert and Tobin Centre for Public Law, UNSW Law School, 7 August 2017

• ‘Preventing ANC Capture of South African Democracy: A Missed Opportunity for Other ‘Constitutional Courts’?’

  I-CON conference, 5-7 July 2016. Panel on ‘Courts, Constitutions & Democratic Hedging’

• ‘Public Law and the Puzzle of Democratic Decay in Brazil’

  Law and Society Association (LSA)/RCSL 2017, Mexico City, 23 June 2017

• ‘The Democratic Recession and the ‘New’ Public Law: Toward Systematic Analysis’

  I-CON conference, Humboldt University, Berlin, 17 June 2016

ICONNECT Columns

• ‘Can International Organisations Help to Stem Democratic Decay?’ (14 November 2017)

• ‘Contemplating the Future in the Era of Democratic Decay’ (15 September 2017)

• ‘When is a Limp More than a Limp? Diagnosing Democratic Decay’ (12 July 2017)

• ‘Democratic Decay in ‘Keystone’ Democracies: The Real Threat to Global Constitutionalism?’ (15 May 2017)

• ‘The ‘C Word: Democratic Decay and the New Frontiers of Comparative Law’ (8 March 2017)

• ‘Enough Complacency: Fighting Democratic Decay in 2017’ (11 January 2017)

Other Blog Posts

• ‘Democracy and the Global Emergency – Shared Experiences, Starkly Uneven Impacts’ Verfassungsblog (15 May 2020)

• ‘Democratic Decay: The Threat with a Thousand Names’ (Democratic Audit blog, 9 March 2019)

• ‘Germany’s Move to Deprive Anti-Democratic Parties of State Funding: An Effective Response to the Populist Wave?’ (ConstitutionNet Voices from the Field 26 July 2017)

• ‘Constitutional Ignorance and Democratic Decay: Breaking the Feedback Loop’ (I-CONnect blog, 17 November 2016)

• ‘Time to View Democratic Decay as a Unified Research Field?’ (I-CONnect blog, 30 September 2016)

• ‘Attacks on Courts: Taking Wider Lessons from Recent Irish Supreme Court Revelations’ (I-CONnect blog, 9 September 2016)

• ‘The Democratic Recession and the ‘New’ Public Law: Toward Systematic Analysis’ (I-CONnect blog, 22 April 2016)

• Designing Resilient Institutions: Countering Democratic Backsliding in Asia. International IDEA, April 2025.

• ‘A Highly Important, if Incomplete, Corrective’

  In Richard Youngs (ed), Post–Cold War Democratic Declines: The Third Wave of Autocratization (Carnegie Europe, 27 June 2019)

• ‘Democratic Decay in 2016’

  International IDEA Annual Review of Constitution-Building Processes: 2016 (International IDEA, 2017)

• DALY, T.G., An African Judicial Network: Building Community, Delivering Justice. African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 31 October 2017.168 pages.

  DALY, T.G., A Constitutional Court for Sri Lanka? Perceptions, Potential, and Pitfalls. Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), 18 April 2017. 33 pages.

  DALY, T.G. and LOCK, T., Brexit and the British Bill of Rights. Edinburgh Law School and Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, February 2017. 42 pages.

  DALY, T.G., The Judiciary and Constitutional Transitions. International IDEA, September 2016. 70% contribution: peer co-author. 32 pages.

  BACHMAIER WINTER, L. and DALY, T.G., Comparative Review: Lay Adjudication Systems in Member States of the Council of Europe.. Council of Europe Georgia Programme 2010-2013.

• DALY, T.G., Beyond Representation in Pandemic Responses—Independent and International Institutions. Melbourne Forum on Constitution-Building in Asia and the Pacific, Policy Brief No.8, September 2021. 12 pages.

• DALY, T.G., How do Distanced and Online Campaigning Affect Political Freedoms? Policy Brief, International IDEA, May 2021.8 pages.

• DALY, T.G., Elections During Crisis: Global Lessons from the Asia-Pacific. Policy Brief No.10, Governing During Crises series, School of Government, 17 March 2021. 13 pages.

• DALY, T.G., Prioritising Parliament: Roadmaps to Reviving Australia’s Parliaments. Policy Brief No.3, Governing During Crises series, School of Government, 1 August 2020. 10 pages.

• DALY, T.G., Securing Democracy: Australia’s Pandemic Response in Global Context. Policy Brief No.1, Governing During Crises series, School of Government, 3 June 2020. 10 pages.

• DALY, T.G., Building Democracy Back Better. Invited submission to the Australian Senate inquiry into national identity, nationalism, and democracy Covid-19 Discussion Paper, 30 August 2020.

• DALY, T.G., Toward Democratic Renewal. Invited submission to the Australian Senate inquiry into national identity, nationalism, and democracy Principal Discussion Paper, 30 September 2019.