Academics

Meet the Faculty

Douglas W. Kmiec, J.D.
Professor of Constitutional Law and Caruso Family Chair in Constitutional Law

Office: School of Law (SOL)
E-mail: douglas.kmiec@pepperdine.edu

• J.D., University of Southern California
• B.A., Northwestern University

One of America's best known scholars and popular commentators on the law, Professor Douglas W. Kmiec holds the endowed chair in constitutional law at Pepperdine Law School. He came to this position after serving several years as dean and St. Thomas More Professor of Law at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and for nearly two decades (1980-99), on the law faculty at the University of Notre Dame. As dean at Catholic University, Professor Kmiec greatly increased academic quality and student selectivity at the same time he deepened the school's religious commitment. During his tenure, the law school moved up noticeably in the U.S. News ranking. At Notre Dame, he was director of Notre Dame's Center on Law & Government, and the founder of its Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. Beyond the university setting, Kmiec was nominated by President Reagan and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), U.S. Department of Justice (1988-89). For several years before his presidential appointment (1985-87), he served together with (now Justice) Samuel A. Alito, Jr. as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in OLC.

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Courses:

• MPP 606 Public Policy and the Legal Framework

Academic Interests:

• Constitutional Law
• Jurisprudence
• Law and Morality

Selected Works:

• Of Judicial Methods and Judicial Integrity: Has Originalism Struck Out?, 35(8) PREVIEW U.S. SUP. CT. CAS. 386 (2008).
• The 2007 Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention; Corporations: Is the U.S. Legal Regime Undermining American Competitiveness?, Nondiscrimination or Deregulation: A U.S.-E.U. Comparison, 12 TEX. REV. L. & POL. 405 (2008).
• A Prayer from Barack Obama: That Americans Will Respect the Faith of Many for the Good of Us All, LEGAL TIMES, Mar. 3, 2008, at 44.
• Yoo's Labour's Lost: Jack Goldsmith's Nine-Month Saga in the Office of Legal Counsel, 31 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 795 (2008) (book review).
• Standing Still -- Did the Roberts Court Narrow, But Not Overrule, Flast to Allow Time to Re-Think Establishment Clause Jurisprudence?, 35 PEPP. L. REV. 509 (2008) (symposium issue).
• Introduction to the 2006 Templeton Lecture; Eminent Domain Post-Kelo: Hitting Home--The Supreme Court Earns Public Notice Opining on Public Use, 9 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 501 (2007).
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