Randy E. Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney’s Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies and the Bradley Prize, Professor Barnett has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern and Harvard Law School.
Professor Barnett’s publications includes twelve books, more than one hundred articles and reviews, as well as numerous op-eds. His works include Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (2nd ed. 2013), The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (2nd ed. 2014), and his latest book, Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (2016). His other books include The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts (2010), Contracts: Cases and Doctrine (6th ed. 2016), and Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (3rd ed. forthcoming 2018).
In 2004, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, he was one of the lawyers representing the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act.He’s appeared in numerous documentaries, including PBS’s Constitution USA with Peter Sagal;and portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable.
Scholarship
Forthcoming Works - Journal Articles & Working Papers
Randy E. Barnett & Evan D. Bernick, The Privileges or Immunities Clause Abridged: A Critique of Kurt Lash on the Fourteenth Amendment, Notre Dame L. Rev. (forthcoming).
Randy E. Barnett, The Declaration of Independence and the American Theory of Government: “First Come Rights, and Then Comes Government”, 42 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 23-28 (2019).
Brief of Amici Curiae Professors of Second Amendment Law, Second Amendment Foundation, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Millennial Policy Center, and Independence Institute in Support of Petitioners, N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. City of New York, No. 18-280 (U.S. May 14, 2019).
