Dr Tarik Olcay
Senior Lecturer in Public Law
Dundee Law School, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
Contact
Biography
Dr Tarik Olcay is a constitutional lawyer and legal theorist working primarily on constitutional change from doctrinal, theoretical, comparative, and empirical perspectives.
Dr Olcay has a multi-disciplinary background with degrees in law, political science, philosophy, and economics. He specialises in constitutional law and legal theory, and his main research interests lie in constitutional theory, comparative constitutional law, natural law theories, and law and technology. His research to date has been funded by institutions including the British Academy (BA), AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Scottish Council on Global Affairs (SCGA). His PhD, completed in 2018 at the University of Glasgow, studied the justifications of constitutional unamendability from theoretical and comparative perspectives.
He currently provides consultancy to the Council of Europe on matters of constitutional justice, functioning of constitutional courts, and dissemination of the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights. He previously advised governments, national and international NGOs, and individuals on matters of constitution-making, constitutional reform, and human rights law. He is regularly invited to give seminars and talks in the fields of constitutional theory and constitutional change, and acts as peer-reviewer for leading academic journals in law, philosophy, and political science. His work has been cited favourably by, among others, the Constitutional Court of Slovenia and the Supreme Court of Kenya, and the High Court of Lesotho, as well as in amicus curiae submissions to the European Court of Human Rights.
Dr Olcay convenes the Law Reading Group in Dundee Law School, as well as co-convening the Inter-disciplinary Theory Reading Group with his colleagues in Humanities. He is Postgraduate Research Director for Dundee Law School, and the University’s constituency representative with the Society of Legal Scholars.
Dr Olcay is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He currently serves as an External Examiner at the School of Law, University of Strathclyde, and is a reviewer for the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) and the British Council. He is also a member of the Constitutional Law and Human Rights Sub-committee of the Law Society of Scotland.
Dr Olcay is Centre of Law and Society Visiting Fellow at Cardiff University in Spring 2025.
Research
Dr Olcay’s research spans the areas of constitutional theory and comparative constitutional law. His current research mainly focusses on theories of constitutional change and seeks to find viable justifications for limiting the power to amend a constitution.
He is currently working on three research projects:
- evaluative constitutionalism
- conceptualising peace as a constitutional value
- artificial intelligence in constitutional reform.
His work has been published in leading academic journals including the International Journal of Constitutional Law, European Constitutional Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Cambridge Law Journal and Public Law and in edited collections published by Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Springer. A number of his research outputs have been translated into Polish and Spanish.
Most of his published and forthcoming research is available on SSRN and Google Scholar.
Research interests
- constitutionalism and constitutional change
- constitutional unamendability
- constitutionalism and artificial intelligence
- peace-making and constitutional reform
- unwritten constitutional norms
- natural law theories
- Turkish constitutional law
PhD supervision
Dr Olcay currently supervises the following PhD students and welcomes informal enquiries from prospective research students interested in public law or legal theory.
- Khaled Alsumait – The Role of the Prime Minister in the Kuwaiti Constitution
- Leonard Klah – The Rule of Law at Crossroads: An Assessment of the Rule of Law under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana
Research Grants
- British Academy (BA), ECR Network Seed Fund Grant (2023) (£2,150)
- Scottish Council on Global Affairs (SCGA), Insight Award (2022 – 2023) (£1,226)
- AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), Pump-priming Fund Competition (2019 – 2020) (£9,325)
- Research Development Fund Competition, Aston University (2019) (£400)
- European Junior Faculty Forum for Public Law and Jurisprudence Grant (2019) (€500)
- University of Edinburgh, Political Settlements Research Programme Seed Funding (2018) (joint) (£1,000)
- US National Science Foundation (NSF) Conference Grant (2009) ($809)
Teaching
Dr Olcay teaches UK constitutional and administrative law to first-year law students, and comparative constitutional law to Honours-level law students, as well as supervising undergraduate and postgraduate law dissertations. He has also developed a new Widening Access Summer School module called Introduction to Law and Government, starting in Summer 2025.
He co-authored a legal pedagogy article on the use of multiple-choice questionnaire exams in Law.
Modules Dr Olcay currently teaches are:
- LW11012 Public Law I – Sources of Power (Module Leader)
- LW21015 Public Law I – Sources of Power (Advanced) (Module Leader)
- LW12012 Public Law II – Controls on Power
- LW22014 Public Law II – Controls on Power (Advanced)
- LW32035 Comparative Constitutional Law (Module Leader)
- LW42032 Comparative Constitutional Law (Advanced) (Module Leader)
- Summer School Module – Introduction to Law and Government (Module Leader).
Media availability
I am available for media commentary on my research.
Dr Olcay’s research centres on constitutional reform. His focus to date has included constitutional reforms in Colombia, India, Scotland, Syria, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. Dr Olcay has advised governments and NGOs on constitutional reform and human rights law, and he regularly engages with national and international media.
Contact Corporate Communications for media enquiries.
Areas of expertise
- Brexit
- Human rights
- Politics
- Scotland
- Scottish independence referendum