A Life for Liberty
The Making of an American Originalist
A law professor's memoir of his own ascendancy from prosecutor to influential legal thinker.
From prosecuting murderers in Chicago, to arguing before the Supreme Court, to authoring more than a dozen books, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett has played an integral role in the rise of originalism—the movement to identify, restore, and defend the original meaning of the Constitution. Thanks in part to his efforts, by 2018 a majority of sitting Supreme Court justices self-identified as “originalists.”
After writing seminal books on libertarianism and contract law, Barnett pivoted to constitutional law. His mission to restore "the lost Constitution" took him from the schoolhouse to the courthouse, where he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzeles v. Raich in the Supreme Court—a case now taught to every law student. Later, he devised and spearheaded the constitutional challenge to Obamacare.
called him.
In A Life for Libertyhow-to guide for anyone seeking real-world advancement of justice and liberty for all.
Randy BarnettAfter graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney’s Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies and the Bradley Prize, Barnett has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern and Harvard Law School. He was a senior advisor to the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Rand Paul. He’s appeared in numerous documentaries and portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable.
