Dr Paolo Sandro

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds in November 2021 as a Lecturer in Law, having previously worked at the University of Salford (Manchester) and at Liverpool Hope University.

In 2024-25, I am a Parliamentary Academic Fellow in Constitutional Law within the The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST). In 2023-24, I was a Michael Beverley Innovation Fellow at the University of Leeds. Since 2017 I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In 2014 I was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Laws of the University of Bergamo (Italy).

I hold a PhD in Legal Theory from the University of Edinburgh and one in Public Law from the University of Roma Tre (Rome). At Roma Tre I also completed my Laurea Triennale (2002-2005) and Laurea Specialistica (2005-2007) in Law.

Research interests

My main areas of research are:

• legal theory
• public law (UK and comparative)
• regulation theory
• political theory
• philosophy of language
• philosophy of action

My first monograph, entitled ‘The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law’, was published by Hart Publishing/Bloomsbury in January 2022, as part of the prestigious Law and Practical Reason series. The book brings all my research interests together. It does so through an integrated jurisprudential methodology, which combines insights from different disciplines (including history, anthropology, political science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of action) while also casting new light on long-standing issues in jurisprudence and public law.

The book is now full Open Access (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) and can be freely downloaded from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4562656.

You can find our more about the book in my interviews with the IACL-AIDC Blog and with Review of Democracy, as well as in this vlog for Diritti Comparati. You can also watch the recordings of my book presentations at the University of Oxford and University of Belgrade.

The book has received so far incredibly generous reviews by Felipe Jimenez in the American Journal of Jurisprudence, by Barbara Levenbook in Jotwell, by Sebastian Lewis in the Modern Law Review, by Conor Crummey in Jurisprudence, by Vicky Kapogianni in Public Law (P.L. 2024, April, 384-387), by Luca Montag in Law Quarterly Review (2024, Vol.140 (Jul), 473-477), and by Kara Woodbury-Smith in Law and Philosophy. It was also recommended by the Legal Theory Bookworm as one of the blog’s ten favourite books in 2022 and by RevDem as one of the five 2022 key books about the Rule of Law.

I regularly provide commentary on salient legal and constitutional issues in the UK and abroad on the UKCLA Blog, on Verfassungsblog, on ICONnect, and for UK in a Changing Europe.

My work has been published, among others, in edited collections in legal theory by Springer (open access here) and by Edward Elgar, in Res Publica, and in Rivista Italiana di Diritto Pubblico e Comunitario.

• The rule of guidance? On the use and legitimacy of soft law in domestic administrative law

Qualifications

• PhD in Legal Theory (University of Edinburgh)
• PhD in Public Law (University of Roma Tre, Rome)
• Laurea Specialistica in Law (University of Roma Tre, Rome)
• Laurea Triennale in Law (University of Roma Tre, Rome)
• PG Cert in Teaching & Learning in HE (Liverpool Hope University)

Professional memberships

• Higher Education Academy
• Society of Legal Scholars
• UK Constitutional Law Association
• International Association of Legislation
• IVR - International Association of Legal and Social Philosophy

Student education

I teach undergraduate modules within the fields of public law and legal theory.

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Law and Social Justice