Rebecca Brown

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

The Washington Post
December 2, 2019
Re: Jonathan Handel

Jonathan Handel was quoted on Pete Davidson's nondisclosure agreement for attending his comedy shows, barring the audience from speaking about his shows. Handel mentioned that successfully suing a random fan for $1 million would be nearly impossible. “The optics of going to court and suing one of your fans is really pretty ugly,” Handel said. “It would be foolish to do that.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Scott Altman
October, 2019

"Are Boycotts, Shunning, and Shaming Corrupt?” Legal Theory Workshop, University of Virginia Law School, Charlottesville, VA.

Gregory Keating
October, 2019

Gregory Keating’s paper, “Is Tort Law ‘Private’?” was reviewed by Ellen Bublick as a significant work of scholarship relating to Tort Law in JOTWELL: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), on October 15, 2019.

Dan Simon
October, 2019

“Confessions True and False,” Korean Society for Criminal Law, Yonsei University Law School, Seoul, South Korea.