Richard Primus, the Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law, teaches the law, theory, and history of the US Constitution. In 2008, he won the first-ever Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for his work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation. Primus is now a senior editorial adviser of the Journal of American Constitutional History.

His writing has appeared in many leading law reviews as well as in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Politico, The New Republic, and Foreign Affairs. Opinions of the justices of the US Supreme Court have cited his scholarship.

Primus works with constitutional law on the state level as well as the federal. He has helped state governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses solve practical problems involving state-level constitutional law, both in Michigan and in other states.

He is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance and a member of the Board of Advisors of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to fighting threats to free and fair self-government.  

Primus practiced law in the Washington, DC, office of Jenner & Block before joining the Michigan Law faculty in 2001.

Related Information

Areas of Interest

Education

  • Harvard College, AB, summa cum laude, social studies
  • University of Oxford, DPhil, politics, Rhodes Scholar, Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College
  • Yale Law School, JD

Recent Courses

Clerkships

  • Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Hon. Guido Calabresi

Featured Scholarship

"Suspect Spheres, Not Enumerated Powers: A Guide for Leaving the Lamppost"

Michigan Law Review
MLaw Repository SSRN WWW
  • Constitutional Law

"Reframing Article I, Section 8"

Fordham Law Review
MLaw Repository SSRN
  • Constitutional Law

"The Federalist Constitution: Foreword"

Fordham Law Review
MLaw Repository WWW
  • Constitutional Law

"Segregation in the Galleries: A Reconsideration"

Michigan Law Review Online
MLaw Repository SSRN WWW
  • Constitutional Law
See All Scholarship

Activities

June 2021

Testified as a constitutional expert at the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing on D.C. Statehood.

October 2020

Co-organizer of the Symposium on the Federalist Constitution, held under the auspices of the Fordham Law Review.

March 2020

Co-authored U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief representing 19 Republican former members of Congress in Trump v. Vance.

February 2020

Spoke about originalism and living constitutionalism in connection with the PBS project "A More or Less Perfect Union," Hillsdale College.

May 2018

Featured speaker on constitutional interpretation (in debate with Randy Barnett)​ at the U.S. Supreme Court, which was sponsored by the Guggenheim Foundation and the Supreme Court Historical Society, May 2018.

March 2018

Participant in the Roundtable on Constitutional Norms, Duke Law School.

April 2018

Invited commentator at the Cooley Symposium sponsored by the Center on the Constitution, Georgetown Law School.

February 2018

Presented "Enumerated Powers and the Bank of the United States" at the Works-in-Progress Conference, Center for the Study of Originalism, University of San Diego.

October 2017

Invited commentator at the Brennan Center Jorde Symposium, Berkeley Law School.

Representative Matters

Cockrum v. Donald J. Trump for President

Argued case as lead counsel for plaintiffs.