Lost, Not Stolen

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 most recent book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in late 2020, and his upcoming book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” will be published by Oxford University Press in 2022.  McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently defending Delaware’s state constitutional requirement of political balance on its court against a First Amendment challenge. 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.