Kellogg Faculty Fellow Christina Bambrick has published the book Constitutionalizing the Private Sphere: A Comparative Inquiry (Cambridge University Press, 2025). The book examines the question: Do private actors have constitutional duties?
Traditionally only government actors are responsible for upholding constitutional rights, these constitutional duties have been increasingly assigned to the private sector by courts and law-makers. The book uses everyday examples such as a landlord's constitutional duty to its tenants or a sport club’s duty to fans to exemplify the allocation of the duties within the private sector. In doing so, it argues that the phenomenon of applying rights “horizontally” can be understood through the lens of republican political theory, with themes echoing the concepts of common good and civic duty in relation to this application. This is argued with use of themes in debate from countries with vastly different histories and aspirations such as the United States, India, Germany, and South Africa.
Bambrick is the Filip Family Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and became a Kellogg faculty fellow in 2022. She specializes in constitutional theory and development, with research interests ranging from American and comparative constitutionalism to republican theory and the history of political thought.