Randy E. Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center 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 most recent book is The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit (2021) (with Evan Bernick). His other books on the Constitution include: 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 (4th ed. forthcoming 2022) (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, including PBS’s Constitution USA with Peter Sagal and A More or Less Perfect Union with Judge Douglas Ginsburg; and he portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable: The Movie. He blogs on the Volokh Conspiracy.
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What the Supreme Court Gets Wrong About Rights
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What the Supreme Court Gets Wrong About Rights
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What the Supreme Court Got Wrong about Rights
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Book Signings
2024 National Lawyers Convention
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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....
Panel 3: Securing the Rights of a Free People
What responsibility do states have in protecting the rights of their citizens? How should we...
Panel 3: Securing the Rights of a Free People
What responsibility do states have in protecting the rights of their citizens? How should we...
Showcase Panel IV: How Originalist is the Supreme Court?
2023 National Lawyers Convention
Featuring: Prof. J. Joel Alicea, Co-Director, Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition,...

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...