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About USC Gould
USC Gould is a top-ranked law school with a 120-year history and reputation for academic excellence. We are located on the beautiful 228-acre USC University Park Campus, just south of downtown Los Angeles.
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Learn about our interdisciplinary curriculum, experiential learning opportunities and specialized areas.
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USC Gould helps prepare you for a stellar legal career. You can pursue a JD degree, one of our numerous graduate and international offerings, or an online degree or certificate.
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Participate in an unparalleled learning experience with diversity of people and thought. Get involved in the law school community and participate in activities that enhance your studies.
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Careers
We work closely with students, graduates and employers to support successful career goals and outcomes. Our overall placement rate is consistently strong, with 94 percent of our JD class employed within 10 months after graduation.
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Faculty
Our faculty is distinguished for its scholarship, as well as for its commitment to teaching. Our 12:1 student-to-faculty ratio creates an intimate and collegial learning environment.
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Alumni and Giving
The global Trojan network of more than 10,000 law alumni and donors include recognized leaders in numerous fields who are deeply committed to supporting student and law school success.
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Rebecca Brown
- FACULTY DIRECTORY
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The Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law
Email: rbrown@law.usc.eduTelephone: (213) 740-1892
Fax: (213) 740-5502
699 Exposition Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90089-0074 USA Room: 430
Last Updated: August 7, 2020
Rebecca Latham Brown is a nationally recognized constitutional law theorist who joined USC Gould School of Law in August 2008. Brown’s scholarship focuses on judicial review and its relationship to individual liberty under the U.S. Constitution. She was named The Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law in 2015.
Brown received her BA from St. John’s College (Annapolis, MD) and her JD, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. She clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and U.S. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III. Brown also worked in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice and practiced with Onek, Klein & Farr in Washington, D.C. From 1988 to 2008, she was a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, where she held the Allen Chair in Law from 2003 until her departure.
Brown recently published “How Constitutional Theory Found Its Soul: The Contributions of Ronald Dworkin,” in Exploring Law’s Empire (Hershovitz ed., Oxford University Press 2006), “The Logic of Majority Rule” (Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 2006) and “Confessions of a Flawed Liberal” (The Good Society 2005). She serves as co-chair of the American Constitution Society’s Constitution in the 21st Century Project.
Books
- Constitutional Theory: Arguments and Perspectives (with Michael J. Gerhardt, Thomas D. Rowe, Jr., and Girardeau Spann) (Lexis Press 2d ed. 2000).
Articles and Book Chapters
- "Judicial Supremacy and Taking Conflicting Rights Seriously," 58 William & Mary Law Review 1433 (2017). - (Hein)
- “The Harm Principle and Free Speech,” 89 Southern California Law Review 953 (2016). - (SSRN)
- “Rhetoric and Reality: Testing the Harm of Campaign Spending (with Andrew D. Martin),” 90 New York University Law Review 1066 (October 2015). - (SSRN)
- “Common Good and Common Ground: The Inevitability of Fundamental Disagreement,” 81 University of Chicago Law Review 397 (Winter 2014). - (bepress)
- “Making Democracy Safe for Justice: A Tribute to Ronald Dworkin,” 89 New York University Law Review 13 (April 2014). - (bepress)
- “Deep and Wide: Justice Marshall’s Contributions to Constitutional Law,” 52 Howard Law Journal 637 (2009). - (Hein)
- “Common Interests and Integration,” 52 St. Louis Law Journal 1131 (2008) (part of Childress Lecture and Symposium). - (Hein)
- “Self-Government, Change, and Justice,” 1 Advance 83 (2007). - (www)
- “How Constitutional Theory Found Its Soul: The Contributions of Ronald Dworkin,” in Exploring Law’s Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin (Oxford University Press, 2006).
- “The Logic of Majority Rule,” 2 Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 23 (2006). - (Hein)
- “Confessions of a Flawed Liberal, reflections on the defensibility, from a liberal perspective, of government interference with certain types of expression,” 14 The Good Society (a PEGS Journal) No. 1-2, at 30 (2005).
- “The Art of Reading Lochner,” 1 New York University Journal of Law & Liberty 570 (2005). - (SSRN)
- “Calming Brown’s Critics: Still Queasy After All These Years,” 79 Peabody Journal of Education 33 (2004).
- “History for the Non-Originalist,” 26 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 69 (2003) (contribution to a symposium entitled “Law and Truth: Originalism and Historical Truth”). - (Hein)
- “Liberty, The New Equality,” 77 New York University Law Review 101 (2002). - (Hein)
- “Activism is Not a Four-Letter Word,” 73 University of Colorado Law Review 1257 (2003) (contribution to a symposium entitled, “Conservative Judicial Activism”). - (Hein)
- “A Government For the People,” 37 University of San Francisco Law Review 5 (2002) (contribution to a symposium discussing Constitutional Self-Government, a book by Princeton professor Christopher Eisgruber). - (Hein)
- “Ode to Conservative Judicial Activism,” 18 Constitutional Commentary 479 (2002).
- “Due Process,” Oxford Companion to American Law, Oxford University Press (2001).
- Constitutional Theory: Arguments and Perspectives, 2d ed (with Michael J. Gerhardt, Thomas D. Rowe, Jr., and Girardeau Spann), Lexis Press, 2000.
FACULTY IN THE NEWS
KPCC Take Two
January 19, 2021
Re: Jean Lantz Reisz
Jean Reisz was interviewed about President Joe Biden's plans to introduce comprehensive immigration reform. "It seems to grant a pathway to citizenship for people who are here without legal status as of Jan. 1, 2021," she said. "It would allow people to presumably get some temporary status."
RECENT SCHOLARSHIP
Felipe Jiménez
November, 2020
"Rethinking Contract Remedies," Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
Ariela Gross
November, 2020
“Mourning, Memory, and Metahistory,” English Language Notes (forthcoming 2021).
Ariela Gross
November, 2020
“Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana,” Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University Annual Conference on Cuban Slavery, Yale University, New Haven, CT.