William Partlett

Associate in Law

Office:	Jerome Greene Hall, Room 613 435 West 116th Street New York N.Y. 10027
Tel:	212-854-2606
Email:	wpartl@law.columbia.edu

Education

• Princeton University, Public and International Affairs, A.B., 2001
• University of Oxford, Russian and Eastern European Studies, M.Phil, 2003
• University of Oxford, Modern History, D.Phil., 2006
• Stanford Law School, J.D., 2009

Areas of Expertise

• Constitutional law
• Constitutional theory
• Comparative law
• Law and Development
• Law and Society

Biography

William Partlett’s scholarship draws on his background in law, history, and comparative politics. His most recent publications explore the best process for drafting and ratifying a new constitution in order to build enduring constitutionalism. His current work focuses on the role of constitutional law in both state-building and political change.
Before coming to Columbia Law School, Partlett clerked for the Honorable Phyllis A. Kravitch of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and worked as a Fellow at the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Austin, Texas. Partlett  also is a Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Publications

Making Constitutions Matter: The Dangers of Constitutional Politics in Post-Authoritarian Constitution-Making, BROOKLYN J. INT’L L. (Forthcoming Fall 2012);

Liberal Revolution, Legality, and the Russian Founding Period, REV. CEN. & E. EUR. LAW (Forthcoming Fall 2012);

Separation of Powers Without Checks and Balances: The Failure of Semi-Presidentialism and the Making of the Russian Constitutional System, 1991-1993, in The Legal Dimension in Cold War Interactions: Some Notes from the Field (William Simons, ed., 2012)

Enforcing Oil and Gas Contracts Without Courts: Reputational Constraints on Resource Nationalism in Russia and Azerbaijan, 18 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA: J. OF POST-SOVIET DEMOCRATIZATION 74 (2010);

Reclassifying Russian Law: Mechanisms, Outcomes, and Solutions for an Overly Politicized Field, 2 COLUM. J. E. EUR. L. 1 (2008) (republished in Chinese by Tsinghua Univ. Press, 2011).