The Rise of Populism
Columbia Student Chapter
435 W 116th St
New York, NY 10027
Speakers:
- Professor Randy Barnett, Georgetown Law
- Professor Kent Greenawalt, Columbia Law
Speakers:
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Faculty Director, Georgetown Center for the Constitution
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
University Professor, Columbia Law School
Kent Greenawalt, an authority on constitutional law and legal philosophy, is a graduate of Columbia's School of Law, where he was a Kent Scholar and Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review. After graduation he clerked for Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan and was an attorney for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Jackson, Miss., before joining the Columbia faculty in 1965. From 1966 to 1969, he served on the New York City Bar Association's civil rights committee. He was Deputy Solicity General in the Department of Justice in 1971-72 and served as chief reporter for the Revision of the Commentary of the Model Penal Code in the 1970s. In 1991 he was named University Professor, Columbia's highest academic honor and faculty rank, allowing him to cross departmental boundaries and teach in both the law school and department of philosophy. He was President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy from 1991-93. He is the author of 13 books on jurisprudence as it relates to church and state, legal interpretation, discrimination, and freedom of speech.
He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and has been a fellow several times at Clare Hall, Cambridge; All Souls College, University of Oxford; and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.