Jeffrey Shulman (L ’05) is Visiting Professor of Law. Professor Shulman has made Georgetown University his academic home for 40 years. From 1984 to 2005, he taught in the Department of English, having earned his Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His literary scholarship appeared in such journals as Studies in English Literature, English Literary History, The Classical Journal, among others. He co-edited Robert Kennedy In His Own Words (Bantam, 1988), a New York Times best-seller (for one week!). A Georgetown Law Evening Program graduate (magna cum laude, Order of the Coif), Professor Shulman worked for the Washington, D.C., Public Defenders Service as a D.C. Bar Pro Bono Fellow. He was an associate at Sidley Austin (Washington, D.C.) from 2005 to 2006. He was Director of Georgetown Law’s Evening Program from 2016 to 2024.

Professor Shulman joined the law faculty in 2006. He has taught Legal Research and Writing, Constitutional Law II (Rights and Liberties) and such constitutional law seminars as Parent, Child, and State and Religious Freedom on Trial. Professor Shulman’s legal scholarship is centered on constitutional family law and the Religion Clauses. His book The Constitutional Parent: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Enfranchisement of the Child (Yale Univ. Press, 2014) was the 2016 Alpha Sigma Nu Award Winner in the Category of Professional Studies (Law), awarded by Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. The Constitutional Parent has been hailed as a “deeply learned, beautifully written, and courageous book” and “a watershed moment in the trajectory of scholarship” on the constitutional status of parents and children.

Professor Shulman received the Frank F. Flegal Excellence in Teaching Award in 2015. He is not only a proud graduate of the Program, but served as Director of the program from 2016 to 2024. He writes: “First in the Department of English and then at the Law Center, I have had the remarkable privilege of being part of this incredibly vibrant community. My teaching and my scholarship have been shaped by the wonderful students it has been my joy to teach, by my colleagues with whom it has been a pleasure to work, and by the values of a university that, in cherishing intellectual inquiry, never stops seeking to nourish heart, mind, and soul.”

Scholarship

Books

Jeffrey Shulman, The Constitutional Parent: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Enfranchisement of the Child (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press 2014). [BOOK]

Contributions to Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Journals

Jeffrey Shulman, 16 Theory & Res. Educ. 253-257 (2018) (reviewing Sigal R. Ben-Porath, Free Speech on Campus (2017)).
Jeffrey Shulman, 15 Theory & Res. Educ. 236-239 (2017) (reviewing Melissa Moschella, To Whom Do Children Belong?: Parental Rights, Civic Education and Children's Autonomy (2016)).
Jeffrey Shulman, Meyer, Pierce, and the History of the Entire Human Race: Barbarism, Social Progress, and (the Fall and Rise of) Parental Rights, 43 Hastings Const. L.Q. 337-388 (2016). [Gtown Law] [HEIN] [W] [L] [SSRN]

Book Chapters & Collected Works

Jeffrey Shulman, Private School Regulation: Individual Rights and Educational Responsibilities, in The Oxford Handbook of Children and the Law 701-732 (James Dywer ed., New York: Oxford University Press 2020).
[BOOK]