Professor Jud Campbell is a legal historian whose scholarship explores American constitutional thought, with particular attention to the history of rights. His work explores older ways of thinking about natural law, natural rights, and general fundamental law, illuminating broad shifts in how Americans have understood constitutional law. Campbell’s publications include articles in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. His 2017 Yale Law Journal article, “Natural Rights and the First Amendment,” has been widely recognized for reshaping scholarly understandings of free speech at the Founding. 

Campbell was awarded the Federalist Society’s 2025 Joseph Story Award, which annually honors one early-career scholar for exceptional achievement in legal scholarship, teaching, and public engagement. He also received Stanford Law School’s 2025 Barbara Allen Babcock Award for Excellence in Teaching in the first-year curriculum.

Before joining the Stanford Law faculty in 2023, Campbell was a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, and the University of Chicago Law School. Earlier in his career, he served as Executive Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.

He earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School and subsequently clerked for Judge Diane S. Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Judge José A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and two master’s degrees from the London School of Economics, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.