Michael W. McConnell
- Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law
- Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center
- Room N325, Neukom Building
Expertise
- Administrative Law
- Civil Liberties
- Complex Litigation
- Constitutional History
- Constitutional Law
- Federal Courts & Federal Jurisdiction
- Federalism
- First Amendment
- Judgment & Decision Making
- Justiciability: Standing
- Legal History
- Legal Theory
- Local & State Government
- Mootness
- Political Questions
- Regulatory Policy
- Ripeness
- Separation of Powers
- Supreme Court
- Takings
Biography
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty 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 book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. 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, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Education
- BA Michigan State University 1976
- JD Order of the Coif University of Chicago Law School 1979
Related Organizations
Courses
- Constitutional Law
- Constitutional Law: Religion and the First Amendment
- Creation of the Constitution
- Directed Research
- Discussion (1L): Orwell's 1984
- Discussion (1L): Readings from Edmund Burke
- Executive Power Under the Constitution
- Originalism
- Reconstruction: Adding the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments
- TGR: Dissertation
Key Works
Faculty on Point | Prof. Michael McConnell on Executive Power and the Status of Immigrants
Faculty On Point | Prof. Michael McConnell on Religious Liberty and the Constitution
News
Former circuit judge Michael McConnell and Professor Noah Rosenblum debate originalism
The NYU Law Magazine
Visiting Professor of Law Michael McConnell, a professor at Stanford Law School and former judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, advocated for a “common sense” version of originalism, while Professor Noah Rosenblum, an expert in constitutional law, administrative law, and legal history, offered a critique…
Read More : Former circuit judge Michael McConnell and Professor Noah Rosenblum debate originalism

