James Tully

Professor Emeritus


James Tully

James Tully

I taught and researched mainly in the area of legal theory, including its history, constitutional theory, indigenous law and rights, global constitutionalism and legal pluralism. UVic law is famous for its interdisciplinarity. It has teaching and research links with Indigenous Governance, Political Science and Philosophy; departments with which I was fortunate to be affiliated. The center of my interest is the interrelationship between democracy and law. My research included self-organised practices and networks of civic citizenship oriented to sustaining public or common goods.

Prior to coming to UVic in 1996, I taught at McGill University (1977-1995) and was the first Jackman Professor of Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto (2001-2003).

  • BA – UBC (1973)
  • PhD – Cambridge (1977)

  • Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an age of diversity (1995)
  • co-editor Multinational Democracy (2001)
  • Democracy and Civic Freedom (2009)
  • Imperialism and Civic Freedom (2009)
  • On Global Citizenship, Bloomsbury (2014)
  • Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context, ed. Robert Nichols and Jakeet Singh, Routledge (2014)
  • 'Consent, Hegemony & Dissent in Treaty Negotiations', Between Consenting Peoples, ed. J. Webber & M. Macleod (2010)
  • 'On the Multiplicity of Global Public Spheres', Beyond Habermas, ed. C. Emden & D. Midgley (2012)
  • 'Middle East Legal and Governmental Pluralism: A view of the field from the demos', Middle East Law and Governance, 4, 2-3 (2012)
  • ‘Two Traditions of Human Rights’, in Matthias Lutz-Bachmann and Amos Nascimento, eds., Human Rights, Human Dignity and Cosmopolitan Ideals, London: Ashgate (2014) 139-58
  • ‘Civic Freedom’, Centre for the Study of Democracy Bulletin, 20, 1-2 (2016)
  • ‘Main author, ‘Introducing global integral constitutionalism’, Global Constitutionalism: human rights, democracy, law, 5, 1 (2016) 1-15