Michael Pal

Professor Michael Pal is a leading Canadian scholar of constitutional law and the law of democracy. He is the author of over 30 academic articles and is currently at work on a book manuscript on the comparative constitutional law and politics of election commissions. 

His article “The Unwritten Principle of Democracy” (2019) 65:2 McGill Law Journal 269 was cited by both the majority and dissenting opinions of the Supreme Court of Canada in its leading case on unwritten principles in constitutional interpretation, Toronto (City) v Ontario (AG), 2021 SCC 34. 

He is the co-editor of Cyber-Threats to Canadian Democracy (McGill-Queen’s, 2022), which was named one of the Hill Times’ political books of the year. 

Professor Pal has a J.D. and doctorate in law from the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto and an LL.M. in Legal Theory from NYU. 

He is Principal Investigator for the Trans-Atlantic Partnership Grant on Democracy, Governance, and Trust ($1.2 million), which is studying how to enhance deliberation and participation in constitutional democracies.

He is the Co-President of the International Society for Public Law’s (ICON-S) Canada Chapter. He was Co-Convenor of the 2024 Public Law Conference hosted at uOttawa.

Professor Pal has been influential on law reform in Canada and internationally on matters relating to election law and constitutional law. He was an expert witness for the Hogue Inquiry into foreign interference in federal elections in 2025. He has appeared recently as legal counsel before the Ontario Court of Appeal, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Federal Court.

Professor Pal is on the Advisory Boards of the Indian Law Review, Electoral Integrity Project, and the International Advisory Panel on Referendums. In 2024, he was a Visiting Professor at the Università Degli Studi di Brescia in their international project on “Enhancing the Effectiveness of Democratic Representation”.