Saul, Nicholas

Nicholas G.S. Saul is a Franco-American PhD candidate at the Sciences Po Law School. His research focuses on the legal form of decentralized organizations and their impact on public governance. In doing so, he aims to observe emerging phenomena of governance in technology such as blockchain DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) and more traditional political discourses on autonomy and self-determination. In asking whether these new forms of organizations have legitimacy in constitutionalizing themselves he explores the impact of technology on political and legal discourse and its consequences on constitutional and international law. Nicholas is supervised for his research by professor Horatia Muir-Watt.

Nicholas is a graduate in Political Philosophy and Economic Law. As a B.A. student at the University of York, U.K., Nicholas majored in philosophy of aesthetics and language under supervision of professor Peter Lamarque. He then graduated from an M.A. in Political and Legal Philosophy (Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2015) and an M.A. in Economic Law, specialized in Global Governance Studies (Sciences Po Law School, 2018). His main research area stems from the Wittgensteinian perspective of contextual philosophy in order to address political and normative questions. At the Sorbonne Nicholas wrote his master’s thesis on collective intention and contextual democracy. At Sciences Po Law School, he defended his thesis on a pluralist normative approach to global constitutionalism and local governance.