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Meet the Faculty

Photo of Robert J. Pushaw, J.D.

Robert J. Pushaw, J.D.
James Wilson Endowed Professor of Law

Office: School of Law (SOL)
E-mail: robert.pushaw@pepperdine.edu

  • J.D., Yale University, 1988
  • B.A., La Salle College, 1980, summa cum laude

SSRN Author Page

In law school, Robert Pushaw served as notes editor of the Yale Law Journal and received an Olin Foundation Fellowship. After graduation, he clerked for Judge James Buckley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and then worked as an associate for Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle.

Joining the University of Missouri School of Law faculty in 1992, Professor Pushaw taught Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Contracts, and Estates & Trusts. In 1998, he won the Blackwell Sanders Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award as the law school's top teacher. In 2000, he received the William Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence, the University of Missouri's highest teaching honor.

Professor Pushaw's scholarship studies the influence of eighteenth-century Anglo-American political and legal theory on the development of the modern law governing the Constitution (especially the Commerce Clause) and the federal courts (particularly the justiciability doctrines and inherent judicial powers). At the University of Missouri, he twice earned the Shook Hardy & Bacon Excellence in Research Award. Professor Pushaw's scholarly writings have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Iowa Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Notre Dame Law Review, BYU Law Review, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and Election Law Journal, as well as in symposium issues published by the principal law reviews at North Carolina, William & Mary, Florida State, Missouri, Arkansas, and Lewis & Clark.

Selected Works:
  • Creating Legal Rights for Suspected Terrorists: Is the Court Being Courageous or Politically Pragmatic?, 84 NOTRE DAME L. REV. (forthcoming 2009).
  • Justifying Wartime Limits on Civil Rights and Liberties, 8 CHAPMAN L. REV. (forthcoming 2009).
  • Partial-Birth Abortion and the Perils of Constitutional Common Law, 31 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL'Y 519 (2008).
  • The "Enemy Combatant" Cases in Historical Context: The Inevitability of Pragmatic Judicial Review, 82 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1005 (2007).
  • A Neo-Federalist Analysis of Federal Question Jurisdiction, 95 CAL. L. REV. 1515 (2007).
  • Bridging the Enforcement Gap in Constitutional Law; A Critique of the Supreme Court's Theory that Self-Restraint Promotes Federalism, 46 WM. & MARY L. REV. 1289 (2005).
  • The Medical Marijuana Case: A Commerce Clause Counter-Revolution?, 9 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 879 (2005).
  • Does Congress Have the Constitutional Power to Prohibit Partial-Birth Abortion?, 42 HARV. J. ON LEGIS. 319 (2005).
  • Defending Deference: A Response to Professors Epstein and Wells, 69 MO. L. REV. 959 (2004).
  • Methods of Interpreting the Commerce Clause: A Comparative Analysis, 55 ARK. L. REV. 1185 (2003).
  • Politics, Ideology, and the Academic Assault on Bush v. Gore, 2 ELECTION L.J. 97 (2003) (book review).
  • Robert J. Pushaw Jr. & Grant S. Nelson, A Critique of the Narrow Interpretation of the Commerce Clause, 96 N.W.U. L. REV. 695 (2002).
  • Judicial Review and the Political Question Doctrine: Reviving the Federalist "Rebuttable Presumption" Analysis, 80 N.C. L. REV. 1165 (2002).
  • Robert J. Pushaw Jr. & Tracey E. George, How is Constitutional Law Made?, 100 MICH. L. REV. 1265 (2002) (book review).
  • Bush v. Gore: Looking at Baker v. Carr in a Conservative Mirror, 18 CONST. COMMENT. 359 (2001).
  • The Inherent Powers of the Federal Courts and the Structural Constitution, 86 IOWA L. REV. 735 (2001).
  • The Presidential Election Dispute, the Political Question Doctrine, and the Fourteenth Amendment: A Reply to Professors Krent and Shane, 29 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 603 (2001).
  • A History of Federal Preemption Law, in THE PREEMPTION DEFENSE IN TORT ACTIONS: LAW, STRATEGY, AND PRACTICE (2008).
  • The Meaning of Article III "Judicial Power", in THE HERITAGE GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION (Edwin Meese, David F. Forte & Matthew Spalding eds. 2005).