The Hydraulics of Constitutional Change: Marriage Equality in South Africa and Beyond

In this research roundtable, Aileen Kavanagh and Akis Psygkas will present their current book project. The book advances a pluralistic understanding of constitutionalism that encompasses multiple actors, including governments, bureaucrats, legislatures, courts, agencies, political parties, and – crucially – the people themselves as key constitutional actors. Kavanagh and Psygkas describe this multi-institutional, dynamic and interactive process of forging constitutional meaning as the hydraulics of collaborative constitutionalism, and illustrate it through the case study of marriage equality. The roundtable will focus on the road to marriage equality in South Africa, while also drawing comparative insights from India, Ireland, and the United States.

Aileen Kavanagh holds the Chair of Constitutional Governance at Trinity College Dublin where she is the Director of TriCON, the Trinity Centre for Constitutional Governance.  She publishes widely in comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory, and human rights.  Her recent book – The Collaborative Constitution (Cambridge University Press, 2003) was the winner of the (main author) Inner Temple Book Prize 2025, a ‘major prize for outstanding authorship’ awarded triennially by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple in London.

Athanasios (Akis) Psygkas is Associate Professor of Law and Faculty Scholar at Western University in Canada, where he co-directs the Public Law Research Group. He is also currently a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Akis’s research interests include comparative public law, law of democracy, regulation and governance. His latest book, titled From the ‘Democratic Deficit’ to a ‘Democratic Surplus’: Constructing Administrative Democracy in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2017) was the runner-up for the 2019 Socio-Legal Studies Association Theory and History Book Prize. Prior to his appointment at Western University, Akis was Senior Lecturer in Public Law and Politics at the University of Bristol. He has also held visiting positions at University College London, the Université Paris Dauphine-PSL, the University of Milan-Bicocca, the University of Toronto, the Institut d’études politiques (Sciences Po) Paris, the European University Institute, and Yale Law School.

Professor Kate O'Regan

Kate O'Regan was the inaugural Director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (2016-2025) and a former judge of the South African Constitutional Court (1994 – 2009) and now an Emeritus Fellow of the Bonavero Institute, Mansfield College and the Faculty of Law.

In the mid-1980s she practiced as a lawyer in Johannesburg in a variety of fields, but especially labour law and land law, representing many of the emerging trade unions and their members, as well as communities threatened with eviction under apartheid land laws.  In 1990, she joined the Faculty of Law at UCT where she taught a range of courses including race, gender and the law, labour law, civil procedure and evidence. Since her fifteen-year term at the South African Constitutional Court ended in 2009,  she has amongst other things served as an ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court of Namibia (from 2010 - 2016), Chairperson of the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry into allegations of police inefficiency and a breakdown in trust between the police and the community of Khayelitsha (2012 – 2014), and as a member of the boards or advisory bodies of many NGOs working in the fields of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and equality.