Law & Policy

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Civil Rights & Race

Regulation & Property Rights

Technology, Law, and Governance

Featured Commentary

Podcasts

Pardon Me? Predictions (And Warnings) For A Second Trump Term

November 6, 2024 interview with Richard A. Epstein, Tom Church

via The Libertarian

Articles

Deportations In The Age Of Trump

November 26, 2024 By Richard A. Epstein

via Defining Ideas

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Videos

Court Upholds TikTok Divestiture Law

Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer discuss the D.C. Circuit’s Dec. 6 decision in Tiktok v. Garland.

December 9, 2024 interview with Eugene Volokh , Jane Bambauer

via Free Speech Unmuted

Articles

The Next Chapter In The Transgender Issue

December 9, 2024 By Richard A. Epstein

via Defining Ideas

Articles

How Does Federalism Hold Up Today?

September 24, 2024 By Michael McConnell

via Defining Ideas

Articles

Reining In The Rogue ICC

December 1, 2024 By Peter Berkowitz

via RealClear

Fellows in this Policy Area

Michael McConnell

Senior Fellow

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Michael McConnell

Senior Fellow

Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and the director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a circuit judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic-majority Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and New York University. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, the First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially on matters relating to church and state, equal protection, and the separation of powers. He has two upcoming books: The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power under the Constitution will be published by Princeton University Press in late 2020, and Establishment of Religion: Neutrality, Accommodation, and Separation will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. McConnell has argued fifteen cases in the US Supreme Court, most recently a 8-1 victory in a Takings Clause case on behalf of California raisin farmers. He is next scheduled to argue in Carney v. Adams, defending a provision of the Delaware constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and DC Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been assistant general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, assistant to the solicitor general of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is senior of counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati.

Jack Goldsmith

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

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Jack Goldsmith

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Jack Goldsmith was a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution. Goldsmith is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University. From 2003 to 2004, he served as the assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel; from 2002 to 2003 he served as the special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense. Goldsmith also taught at the University of Chicago Law School from 1997 to 2002 and at the University of Virginia Law School from 1994 to 1997. In his academic work, Goldsmith has written widely on issues related to national security law, presidential power, international law, and Internet regulation. His books include Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11 (2012), The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment inside the Bush Administration (2009), Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World (with Tim Wu) (2006), and The Limits of International Law (with Eric Posner) (2005). He blogs on national security matters at the Lawfare blog,and on issues of labor law and policy at the On Labor blog. Goldsmith is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds a JD from Yale Law School, a BA and an MA from Oxford University, and a BA from Washington & Lee University. He clerked for Supreme Court justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Court of Appeals judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, and Judge George Aldrich on the Iran-US Claims Tribunal.

Richard A. Epstein

Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct)

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Richard A. Epstein

Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Richard A. Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. In 2011, Epstein was a recipient of the Bradley Prize for outstanding achievement. In 2005, the College of William & Mary School of Law awarded him the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize. Epstein researches and writes in a broad range of constitutional, economic, historical, and philosophical subjects. He has taught administrative law, antitrust law, communications law, constitutional law, corporation criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law, health law, labor law, Roman law, real estate development and finance, and individual and corporate taxation. He edited the Journal of Legal Studies (1981–91) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991–2001). Epstein’s most recent publication is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). Other books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law (2011); The Case against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover Institution Press, 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection for Private Property (2008); How the Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (2006); Overdose (2006); and Free Markets under Siege: Cartels, Politics, and Social Welfare (Hoover Institution Press, 2005). He received a BA degree in philosophy summa cum laude from Columbia in 1964; a BA degree in law with first-class honors from Oxford University in 1966; and an LLB degree cum laude, from the Yale Law School in 1968. Upon graduation he joined the faculty at the University of Southern California, where he taught until 1972. In 1972, he visited the University of Chicago and became a regular member of the faculty the following year. He has been a senior fellow at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics since 1984 and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. He has been a Hoover fellow since 2000.

Daniel P. Kessler

Keith and Jan Hurlbut Senior Fellow

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Daniel P. Kessler

Keith and Jan Hurlbut Senior Fellow

Daniel Kessler is the Keith and Jan Hurlbut Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he teaches courses on economics, public policy, and the health care industry. He is also a professor at the Stanford Law School. Among his publications are, with Mark McClellan, “The Effect of Hospital Ownership on Medical Productivity,” in the RAND Journal of Economics (2002), and “Designing Hospital Antitrust Policy to Promote Social Welfare,” which appeared in Frontiers in Health Policy Research. His books include a forthcoming second edition of Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System (Hoover Institution Press, 2011), coauthored with Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow John Cogan and R. Glenn Hubbard, and Regulation versus Litigation: Perspectives from Economics and Law (University of Chicago Press, 2010). He is the holder of a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a JD from Stanford Law School.

Peter Berkowitz

Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow

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Peter Berkowitz

Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In 2019-2021, he served as the Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department's Commission on Unalienable Rights, and senior adviser to the Secretary of State. He is a 2017 recipient of the Bradley Prize. He is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. He serves as director of studies for The Public Interest Fellowship. He is the author of Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation (Hoover Institution Press, 2013); Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999); and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995). He is the editor of seven collections of essays on political ideas and institutions published by the Hoover Institution: Renewing the American Constitutional Tradition (2014); Future Challenges in National Security and Law (2010); The Future of American Intelligence (2005); Terrorism, the Laws of War, and the Constitution: Debating the Enemy Combatant Cases (2005); Varieties of Conservatism in America (2004); Varieties of Progressivism in America (2004); and Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic (2003). He has written hundreds of articles, essays and reviews on a range of subjects for a variety of publications, including The American Interest, the American Political Science Review, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Claremont Review of Books, Commentary, First Things, Forbes.com, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, the London Review of Books, National Journal, National Review, The New Criterion, The New Republic, Policy Review, Politico, The Public Interest, the Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, The Wilson Quarterly, and the Yale Law Journal. In addition to teaching regularly in the United States and Israel, Dr. Berkowitz has led seminars on the principles of freedom and the American constitutional tradition for students from Burma at the George W. Bush Presidential Center and for Korean students at Underwood International College at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. He taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at George Mason University School of Law from 1999 to 2006, and political philosophy in the department of government at Harvard University from 1990 to 1999. He holds a JD and a PhD in political science from Yale University; an MA in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and a BA in English literature from Swarthmore College.