Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and 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 United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic 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 NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory.  He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His upcoming book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” will be published by Princeton University Press in late 2020, and his upcoming book “Establishment of Religion: Neutrality, Accommodation, and Separation,” will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.  McConnell has argued fifteen cases in the United States 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 D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & 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.