Turkuler Isiksel is Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. She holds a PhD in political science from Yale University and works primarily in contemporary political theory. Isiksel's research focuses on the ways in which descriptive and normative categories tailored to the nation-state apply to institutions that wield political power beyond that context, such as regional organizations, international economic regimes, and transnational courts.
Isiksel's monograph, entitled Europe’s Functional Constitution. A Theory of Constitutionalism beyond the State, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016 under the Oxford Constitutional Theory Series. The book evaluates the extent to which constitutionalism, as a normative and empirical concept, can be adapted to supranational institutions. Isiksel addresses this question in the light of the European Union's legal order. She argues that the economically driven process of European integration has brought into being a qualitatively distinct form of constitutional practice (what Isiksel terms functional constitutionalism) that cannot be understood in the light of the conventional rights-based and popular sovereigntist models of constitutional rule. By constitutionalizing the goal of economic integration, the EU has subordinated ever greater swathes of public policy to the imperatives of maintaining a single market and common currency, with deleterious consequences for democracy and social justice.
Isiksel is currently working on a book on the constitutional and human rights claims of corporations. While the metaphor of corporate personhood has (justly) come under fire for drawing a moral equivalence between aggregate agents and embodied human beings, it is equally problematic for ignoring the distinctions between corporate agents. Isiksel develops a normative framework for adjudicating corporate rights claims that is sensitive to the kaleidoscopic variety of social purposes that guide such entities, which include universities, cities, churches, clubs, and charities, alongside business enterprises. According to the purposive conception of the corporation Isiksel proposes, the primary principles and goals that guide a corporate entity must serve as the basis for determining its rights. The book draws on corporate rights jurisprudence from the US, ECHR, and the EU in developing this argument.
Isiksel's other research interests include the evolution of ideas about commerce and international politics, as well as theories of sovereignty, delegated governance, citizenship, cosmopolitanism, constitutional theory, and Turkey-E.U. relations.
Prior to joining the political science faculty at Columbia, Isiksel held a Jean Monnet postdoctoral fellowship at the Global Governance Program at the European University Institute in Florence. Isiksel served as a Fellow at the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University during the 2018-2019 academic year. She has previously held the LAPA/Perkins Fellowship at Princeton University's Law and Public Affairs Program (2014-2015), an Emile Noël Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice at NYU School of Law (Fall 2015), and was a visiting research fellow at the Justitia Amplificata Centre for Advanced Studies at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt-am-Main (Summer 2015).
Isiksel is an affiliated faculty member (by courtesy) at Columbia Law School. She is currently a member of the Committee for Global Thought and of the Governing Board of the Society of Fellows at Columbia, and is serving on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review (2020-2024). Isiksel holds an undergraduate degree in Politics (MA Hons) from the University of Edinburgh.
Click here to request a CV.
Click here for her Google Scholar page.
Turkuler Isiksel is Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. She holds a PhD in political science from Yale University and works primarily in contemporary political theory. Isiksel's research focuses on the ways in which descriptive and normative categories tailored to the nation-state apply to institutions that wield political power beyond that context, such as regional organizations, international economic regimes, and transnational courts.
Isiksel's monograph, entitled Europe’s Functional Constitution. A Theory of Constitutionalism beyond the State, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016 under the Oxford Constitutional Theory Series. The book evaluates the extent to which constitutionalism, as a normative and empirical concept, can be adapted to supranational institutions. Isiksel addresses this question in the light of the European Union's legal order. She argues that the economically driven process of European integration has brought into being a qualitatively distinct form of constitutional practice (what Isiksel terms functional constitutionalism) that cannot be understood in the light of the conventional rights-based and popular sovereigntist models of constitutional rule. By constitutionalizing the goal of economic integration, the EU has subordinated ever greater swathes of public policy to the imperatives of maintaining a single market and common currency, with deleterious consequences for democracy and social justice.
Isiksel is currently working on a book on the constitutional and human rights claims of corporations. While the metaphor of corporate personhood has (justly) come under fire for drawing a moral equivalence between aggregate agents and embodied human beings, it is equally problematic for ignoring the distinctions between corporate agents. Isiksel develops a normative framework for adjudicating corporate rights claims that is sensitive to the kaleidoscopic variety of social purposes that guide such entities, which include universities, cities, churches, clubs, and charities, alongside business enterprises. According to the purposive conception of the corporation Isiksel proposes, the primary principles and goals that guide a corporate entity must serve as the basis for determining its rights. The book draws on corporate rights jurisprudence from the US, ECHR, and the EU in developing this argument.
Isiksel's other research interests include the evolution of ideas about commerce and international politics, as well as theories of sovereignty, delegated governance, citizenship, cosmopolitanism, constitutional theory, and Turkey-E.U. relations.
Prior to joining the political science faculty at Columbia, Isiksel held a Jean Monnet postdoctoral fellowship at the Global Governance Program at the European University Institute in Florence. Isiksel served as a Fellow at the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University during the 2018-2019 academic year. She has previously held the LAPA/Perkins Fellowship at Princeton University's Law and Public Affairs Program (2014-2015), an Emile Noël Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice at NYU School of Law (Fall 2015), and was a visiting research fellow at the Justitia Amplificata Centre for Advanced Studies at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt-am-Main (Summer 2015).
Isiksel is an affiliated faculty member (by courtesy) at Columbia Law School. She is currently a member of the Committee for Global Thought and of the Governing Board of the Society of Fellows at Columbia, and is serving on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review (2020-2024). Isiksel holds an undergraduate degree in Politics (MA Hons) from the University of Edinburgh.
Click here to request a CV.
Click here for her Google Scholar page.