Current Visiting Scholars

Andrew DeLoach

Andrew DeLoach is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Human Rights at Trinity Law School. He teaches courses in Constitutional Law, International Human Rights, and Jurisprudence, and directs Trinity’s summer Human Rights Program in The Hague, Netherlands, and Strasbourg, France. He has also taught courses in Law and Religion, and Holocaust, Genocide & the Law. His research interests include constitutional law, human rights and international law, philosophy of law, and law and literature (especially Shakespeare), and the intersection of these with morality and religion.

Professor DeLoach received his B.A. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego. He earned his J.D. from California Western School of Law in San Diego. While there, he competed with the Trial Team and served as Vice President of the Federalist Society. After law school, Professor DeLoach attended the International Academy of Apologetics, Evangelism & Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, and became a Fellow of the Academy. He has published articles on a variety of subjects, including in the Journal of Christian Legal Thought (of which he is now an Associate Editor), and co-authored a book chapter titled “Myth and Resurrection,” in The Resurrection Fact: Responding to Modern Critics (New Reformation Press, 2016). Professor DeLoach practiced in civil litigation and appeals for several years before opening his own estate planning practice.

Past Scholars

2022

Robert Leider

Robert Leider is an Assistant Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. His scholarly interests are in criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law, especially concerning questions about the use of force and the rule of law. He has written on the law of self-defense, the constitutional allocation of military power, and gun control. Among other places, he has published in the Florida Law Review (forthcoming), the Indiana Law Journal, and the Wall Street Journal. Before joining Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Leider was at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC. He was previously with Mayer Brown LLP and was an Olin-Searle-Smith Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has clerked for Judge Diane S. Sykes, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and Justice Clarence Thomas. Professor Leider earned a BA, summa cum laude, from The George Washington University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in Philosophy (dissertation defended with distinction) from Georgetown University. While at Yale, he served as an articles editor for the Yale Law Journal.

2020

Ilya Somin

Professor Ilya Somin is a Professor of Law at George Mason University and will be the Center’s Visiting Scholar in Spring 2020. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, and the study of popular political participation and its implications for constitutional democracy.  He is the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press, forthcoming),  Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter(Stanford University Press, revised and expanded second edition, 2016), and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain (University of Chicago Press, 2015, rev. paperback ed., 2016), coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Eminent Domain: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017).  Democracy and Political Ignorance has been translated into Italian and Japanese.

Somin’s work has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a variety of popular press outlets, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Room for Debate website, CNN, USA Today, US News and World Report, Newark Star Ledger, South China Morning Post, Legal Times, National Law Journal and Reason.

Somin has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Zhengzhou University in China. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003.  In 2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.

2019

Erica Goldberg

Professor Erica Goldberg will be the Center’s Visiting Scholar for Fall 2019 and is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Dayton School of Law.  Her work primarily focuses on harmonizing tort law remedies with First Amendment rights. She examines the formal frameworks and dichotomies that safeguard robust free speech rights, such as the state action doctrine and the distinction between physical harm and emotional harm.  She has been published in the Columbia Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, Connecticut Law Review, and Michigan Law Review First Impressions. An op ed of hers appeared in The Columbus Dispatch, and she blogs at In a Crowded Theater. Links to her blog posts have appeared in media including The Washington Post and CNN.com.

In August 2017, Professor Goldberg joined the University of Dayton School of Law, where she teaches torts and criminal procedure.  Prior to this appointment, she was an assistant professor at Ohio Northern University Law School. She also taught Legal Research and Writing and a seminar on speech torts as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, and Law and Religion as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Penn State Law School.

After graduating from Stanford Law School, Professor Goldberg clerked for Judge Ronald L. Gilman on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.  She also practiced appellate litigation at Latham & Watkins LLP, and served as a legal fellow at a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that protects the constitutional rights of students and faculty at universities, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.   Professor Goldberg has helped write briefs and petitions filed before several courts of appeals and the Supreme Court.

2017

Christina Mulligan

Professor Mulligan teaches Internet law, intellectual property law, and trusts & estates. Her research addresses efforts to adapt intellectual property law for the digital age, the relationship between law and technology, and theories of constitutional interpretation. Recently, she has written about the Internet of Things, robot punishment, and early translations of the Constitution.

While at Brooklyn, Professor Mulligan researched as a visiting scholar at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and taught as a visiting associate professor at Yale Law School. Previously, she taught at the University of Georgia and was a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Her scholarship has been published in a variety of journals and law reviews, including Georgia Law Review, SMU Law Review, and Constitutional Commentary.

Professor Mulligan earned her bachelor’s degree cum laude and her law degree cum laude from Harvard University, where she worked as a production and article editor for the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Before entering academia, she served as a law clerk for Judge Charles F. Lettow of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Tara Helfman

Professor Helfman was a Visiting Scholar of the Center in the fall of 2017. She graduated from Yale Law School in 2006, where she was the Yale Journal of International Law Young Scholar of the Year and the recipient of the Joseph Parker Prize for Legal History. An undergraduate alumna of Queens College (1999), she was one of the first two recipients of a British Marshall Scholarship from the City University of New York. She went on to pursue advanced degrees in intellectual history and legal theory from Cambridge University and University College London.

Professor Helfman teaches Contracts, Constitutional Law I, Law of the Sea, and International Law. Her primary research interests are public international law and legal history. She is the co-author with Edgar McManus of the two-volume Liberty and Union: A Constitutional History of the United States (Routledge: 2014). Professor Helfman was previously an Associate at the New York office of Debevoise and Plimpton, LLP, in the International Dispute Resolution and Securities & White Collar Crime Practice Groups.

2015

Melanie Marlowe

Melanie M. Marlowe writes on American politics, with a special focus on the presidency and the Constitution. She edited, with Carol McNamara, The Obama Presidency in the Constitutional Order, and contributed chapters on President Obama’s exercise of general constitutional powers and his view of his Commander-in-Chief powers to that volume. In addition to other publications on the Obama presidency specifically, she has published on the executive’s role in the administrative state.

A native of Idaho, she received her B.A. in political science from Utah State University and an M.A. from Claremont Graduate University, where she is completing a dissertation on executive war powers. She is a lecturer at Miami University (Ohio), where she teaches constitutional law, civil liberties law, and seminars on liberty in the American regime. She is a coordinator with the Thomas W. Smith Project on Liberty, Democracy, and Citizenship. She was a Congressional Fellow with the American Political Science Association in 2012-2013, during which time she studied congressional oversight of the executive branch. She was a Jack Miller Center Academic Fellow and a Lehrman American Studies Fellow at Princeton.

Lee Strang

Professor Strang teaches at The University of Toledo College of Law, where he joined the faculty in 2008, was granted tenure in 2010, and was named Director of Faculty Research in 2014. In 2015, Professor Strang was named the John W. Stoepler Professor of Law & Values. Previously, he was a visiting Professor at Michigan State University College of Law and an Associate Professor at Ave Maria School of Law. A graduate of the University of Iowa, where he was Articles Editor of the Iowa Law Review and Order of the Coif, Professor Strang also holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School.

Prior to teaching, Professor Strang served as a judicial clerk for Chief Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was also an associate for Jenner & Block LLP in Chicago, where he practiced in general and appellate litigation.

A prolific scholar, Professor Strang has published in the fields of constitutional law and interpretation, property law, and religion and the First Amendment. His most recent article, Originalism and the Aristotelian Tradition: Virtue’s Home in Originalism, was published in the Fordham Law Review.

John Stinneford

Professor Stinneford (University of Florida Levin College of Law) teaches and writes about criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law, with a particular focus on the original meaning of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. His work has been published in a variety of scholarly journals, including the Virginia Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the William & Mary Law Review. He has won several national awards for his writing, and has been cited by United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (Ret.), state and federal courts, and numerous scholars.

Before joining the Florida faculty in 2009, Professor Stinneford clerked for the Hon. James Moran of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and practiced law with Winston & Strawn in Chicago.

2014

Richard Izquierdo

Professor Izquierdo served as a Fellow of the Center for two years.

He is currently an Adjunct Constitutional Law Professor at Concord Law School. He researches and writes about constitutional law and contracts, with a particular interest in constitutional foundations and transformations. He received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Rutgers University (New Brunswick), his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University. He was the 2012-13 Thomas W. Smith Postdoctoral Research Associate within the Department of Politics at Princeton University. Before pursuing an academic career, he practiced law at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in New York City.