András Sajó is former Vice- President of the European Court of Human rights. As a judge he dealt with cases of rights violation originating in illiberal shifts in many countries. His term ended by May 2017 and he is currently University Professor at Central European University (CEU), Budapest, where he teaches constitutional law and interdisciplinary courses on the Demise of Constitutionalism. He also runs a research program of the same name. Before his judicial activity he was involved in public law projects in countries in the process of transition to democracy and taught comparative law at Cardozo Law School, NYU Law School, and CEU.

Renáta Uitz is Professor and Chair of the Comparative Constitutional Law program at Central European University, Budapest. Her teaching covers subjects in comparative constitutional law and human rights with special emphasis on the enforcement of constitutional rights. Theories and practices of good government, transition to and from constitutional democracy, questions of personal autonomy and equality, including religious liberty and sexual autonomy, are at the centre of her research interests.

Stephen Holmes is Walter E. Meyer Professorship of Law at New York University. His research centres on the history and recent evolution of liberalism and antiliberalism in Europe, the 1787 Constitution as a blueprint for continental expansion, the near- impossibility of imposing rules of democratic accountability on the deep state, the traumatic legacy of 1989, and the diffi culty of combating jihadist terrorism within the bounds of the Constitution and the international laws of war. In 1988, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete a study of the theoretical foundations of liberal democracy. He was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2003- 2005 for his work on Russian legal reform. After receiving his PhD from Yale in 1976, Holmes taught briefl y at Yale and Wesleyan universities before becoming a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University in 1978. He later taught at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and Princeton before joining the faculty at NYU School of Law in 2000.