Think constitutional law and visions are conjured of hushed library alcoves, mountains of thick, unexciting books and sober courtrooms. Enter one of the world's leading experts on the subject, the conservatively dressed, softly spoken, recently retired University of Hong Kong professor Yash Ghai, and perhaps the picture is complete.
Professor Ghai's 43 years as an academic may have involved their share of 'boring books', but there have also been plenty of bullets, bodyguards and even bombs. He has helped draw up the constitutions of 15 countries, among them some of the most conflict-riven of recent decades - Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Papua New Guinea.
While some of that work has involved researching and writing from the safe distance of a Hong Kong office, drawing up a nation's laws also requires on-the-ground consultation and negotiation and sometimes even conflict resolution.
Constitutions have also taken Professor Ghai down the paths of economics, privatisation, advising political and regional groups and even, as of last November, to being the United Nations' special representative on human rights to Cambodia.
Somehow the academic, who last week officially ended his tenure as the University of Hong Kong's Sir Y. K. Pao professor of constitutional law, has squeezed all that in between his day job of teaching law and writing scholarly tomes; he reckons he has authored or edited at least 20 books.
He was in Baghdad last year at the age of 66, traversing the infamous route from the airport to the high-security administrative hub known as the Green Zone, being driven about in military convoys bristling with machine guns and dodging bombs.