Richard Garnett
Paul J. Schierl/Fort Howard Corporation Professor, Concurrent Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame Law School
Areas of Expertise
Church/State Relations; Constitutional Law; Criminal Law and Procedure; Death Penalty; Education Reform and Policy; Federalism and Criminal Law; Free Exercise of Religion; Free Speech and Expressive Association; Religion in the Public Square; School Choice
Garnett teaches and writes about the freedoms of speech, association, and religion, and also about constitutional law more generally. He is the founding director of Notre Dame’s Program on Church, State, and Society. He has published dozens of law-review articles and book chapters. His current research project, Two There Are: Understanding the Separation of Church and State, will be published by Cambridge University Press.
Garnett clerked for the late Chief Justice of the United States William H. Rehnquist in 1996 and also for the late Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Richard S. Arnold.
Garnett is involved in efforts to strengthen Catholic schools and to reform education policy more generally. He served on the Notre Dame Task Force on Catholic Education, is a Fellow of the University’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, is a founding Associate of the American Center for School Choice, and consults regularly with the Alliance for Catholic Education.
Garnett holds a juris doctor from Yale Law School and a bachelor of arts in philosophy from Duke University.