Randy E. Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and is the Faculty 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 thirteen books, more than one hundred articles and reviews, as well as numerous op-eds. His most recent book is Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago (2026). His other books on the Constitution include: A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist (2024); The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit (2021) (with Evan Bernick); An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know (2019) (with Josh Blackman); Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (2nd ed. 2013); Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (2016); and Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (5th ed. forthcoming 2027) (with Josh Blackman). His books on contracts are The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts (2010) and Contracts: Cases and Doctrine (7th ed. 2021) (with Nate Oman). And he is the author of The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (2nd ed. 2014).
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 in NFIB v. Sebelius. He’s appeared in numerous documentaries and portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable: The Movie. On X he is @RandyEBarnett
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What Everyone Gets Wrong About Rights: The Forgotten Conception
Las Vegas Lawyer Chapter
Fogo de Chao360 E. Flamingo Rd
Las Vegas, NV 89169
Enforcing the Ninth Amendment
Georgetown Student Chapter
Georgetown University Law Center (McDounough Hall Room 207)600 New Jersey Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001
General Law and Applied Topics
6th Annual UVA Originalism Symposium
Caplin Pavilion1826 University Ave
Charlottesville, VA 22903
What the Supreme Court Gets Wrong About Rights
NYU Student Chapter
NYU Law245 Sullivan Street
New York, NY 10012
Courthouse Steps Preview: Trump v. Barbara
On June 27, 2025, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District...
Courthouse Steps Preview: Trump v. Barbara
On June 27, 2025, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District...
General Law and Applied Topics
6th Annual UVA Originalism Symposium
What role does general law play in shaping constitutional interpretation, and how does it apply...
Open Minds: Prof. Randy Barnett & Prof. Joshua Kleinfeld Part III
In Part Three of Open Minds with Prof. Randy Barnett and Prof. Joshua Kleinfeld, Prof....
Open Minds: Prof. Randy Barnett & Prof. Joshua Kleinfeld Part II
In Part Two of Open Minds with Prof. Randy Barnett and Prof. Joshua Kleinfeld, Prof....
Constitutional Amendements
A Bill of Rights was not part of the Constitution of 1787. Its omission was hotly debated. Some Founding Fathers, most famously Alexander Hamilton, argued...
Federalism
How did the Founders envision federalism? Why is it a crucial part of our Constitutional government? Is it still functioning today in the way it...
Amendments
Amendments to the Constitution are almost as old as the Constitution itself. Learn more about the original “Amendments” (which we now call the Bill of...
The Founders
In order to understand the founding documents of the United States, you need to know something about the men who wrote them. What books or...