Dr Raffael Fasel

Biography

Raffael Fasel is University Assistant Professor in Public Law (fixed term) at the Cambridge Law Faculty and Fellow of Jesus College. He specialises in public law, with a particular interest in constitutional theory, human rights law, and animal rights law.

Raffael was previously Yates Glazebrook Fellow and College Assistant Professor in Law at Jesus College and Fellow in Law at the London School of Economics. He has held visiting positions at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, the University of Oxford, and NYU Law School. In 2021, he was awarded a £455,000 grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation for his research in constitutional theory, for which he is affiliated with the University of Zurich. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Fribourg with a Bachelor of Law and a Master of Law degree, obtained an MA in Philosophy from University College London, an LLM (with straight Honors) from Yale Law School as a Fulbright scholar, and a PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge, for which he was awarded a Yorke Prize.

He is the author and co-author of three books. His PhD book, More Equal Than Others: Humans and the Rights of Other Animals (Oxford University Press 2024), has been praised as ‘marvellous, a readable and immensely persuasive argument’ (Conor Gearty, LSE) and as ‘required reading’ that is ‘theoretically nuanced and deep, yet ultimately quite practical in its implications’ (Douglas Kysar, Yale Law School). The book is the subject of a symposium in the International Association of Constitutional Law blog and of a forthcoming symposium in Res Publica, and was reviewed in Jurisprudence. Raffael is also the co-author (with John Adenitire) of Animals and the Constitution: Towards Sentience-based Constitutionalism (forthcoming with Oxford University Press), and (with Sean Butler) of Animal Rights Law (Hart Publishing 2023; second edition under contract), the first textbook of its kind, which is currently being translated into Spanish, and which was reviewed in the Modern Law Review, Environmental Law Review, Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, Natur + Recht, and CHOICE. In addition, he is the co-editor (with John Adenitire) of Fundamental Rights for Non-Humans: Foundations, Flaws, and Futures (forthcoming with Hart Publishing), and he is currently working (with Lars Vinx) on an edited volume on Constituent Power and its Limits.

Raffael’s academic work has been published in leading scientific journals such as the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Modern Law Review, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law, and his popular writing has been published in the Times Literary Supplement and other outlets with a wider reach. His work has been covered in various news outlets, including the BBC, The Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Irish Times, and The National.

Raffael's current research project, entitled Containing the People: Constitution-making After Popular Will, explores the concept of constituent power from the perspectives of intellectual history, constitutional theory, and comparative constitutional law. The project aims to trace the concept of constituent power back to its origins as a normatively bounded power and to develop a contemporary account of normatively limited constituent power that preserves its democratic potential.

During his doctoral studies, Raffael co-founded the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law and currently serves as its Co-Director. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and is a Board Member of the Nonhuman Rights Project.

Raffael is happy to supervise PhD students. His current PhD supervisees are Diego de Guadalupe Romero Rivero and Michael Gold.

You can follow him on Bluesky: @raffaelfasel.bsky.social