Michael DeBow joined the Cumberland faculty in 1988. He regularly teaches courses in Property, Business Organizations, Administrative Law, Legislation, and Local Government.
Professor DeBow is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Alabama (1976, 1978). He graduated from the Yale Law School in 1980, and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
DeBow's career included a stint in private practice in Washington, D.C., followed by a judicial clerkship with Judge Kenneth W. Starr of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1983-84. DeBow then served as an attorney-advisor to Federal Trade Commission chairman James C. Miller III (1984-85), and a special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Douglas Ginsburg, in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (1985-86). He began his teaching career at the University of Georgia business school, where he taught for two years prior to coming to Samford.
From 2000 to 2004, DeBow also acted in a part-time capacity as special assistant for legal policy to Alabama attorney general Bill Pryor. He was a visiting professor of law at George Mason University in 1999. He was a (nonresident) Salvatori Fellow of The Heritage Foundation during 1993-95, and a member of the executive committee of the Association of Private Enterprise Education during 1995-99. DeBow attended summer institutes in quantitative methods for law professors (George Mason Law & Economics Center, 1990), Austrian economics (NYU Department of Economics, 1997), and the study of freedom (Templeton Foundation Freedom Project, 2000). In 2008 he was named an Adjunct Fellow of the Alabama Policy Institute.
Professor DeBow has taught several undergraduate courses at Samford, including one which received a supporting grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Most recently, he taught an undergraduate course in law and economics for the Samford's Brock School of Business. He has also taught public health law for the UAB School of Public Health on several occasions.
DeBow's articles have appeared in such journals as the Texas Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Regulation, Policy Review, The Freeman, and the Journal of Law & Politics. He co-edits the Federalist Society's Pre-Law Reading List and its annotated bibliography of conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.
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The Strange Death of Socialist Legal Theory
201 Monroe St #2100Montogomery, Alabama 36104
Judicial Selection
Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC 550 South Main Street Suite 400Greenville, South Carolina 29601
Administrative Law & Regulation: What Next for Negotiated Rulemaking?
2001 National Lawyers Convention
The Mayflower Hotel1127 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036
Reynolds v. United States - Post-Decision SCOTUScast
SCOTUScast 02-01-12 featuring Michael DeBow
On January 23, 2012, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Reynolds v. United States....
Reynolds v. United States - Post-Argument SCOTUSCast
SCOTUScast 10-19-11 featuring Michael DeBow
On October 3, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Reynolds v. United States. The...
State Judicial Selection: Once More Unto the Breach
Another election season approaches and with it the debate over the proper mechanism to select...
The Road Back from "Tort Hell": The Alabama Supreme Court, 1994-2004
It would be difficult to find a state supreme court that has changed more in...
The Case for Partisan Judicial Elections
Views expressed in this paper are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily...