Richard Primus, the Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, 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. The students of Michigan Law have given him the L. Hart Wright Award for outstanding teaching on four separate occasions.

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’s most recent book, The Oldest Constitutional Question: Enumeration and Federal Power (Harvard University Press, 2025) is a challenge to decades of conventional wisdom on one of the foundational issues of American constitutional law.

Primus works with constitutional law on the state level as well as the federal level. 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. He also is a faculty affiliate of the University of Michigan’s Program in Race, Law, and History.

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

    • Recent Courses

    Clerkships

    • US Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
    • US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Hon. Guido Calabresi

    Personal Links

    Featured Scholarship

    The Oldest Constitutional Question: Enumeration and National Power

    • Constitutional Law

    "Memory, Resistance, and Doubt"

    William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal

    MLaw Repository WWW HEIN
    • Legal History

    "Sins and Omissions: Slavery and the Bill of Rights"

    Journal of American Constitutional History
    MLaw Repository WWW HEIN
    • Constitutional Law
    • Legal History

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

    Michigan Law Review
    MLaw Repository WWW HEIN
    • 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
    Counsel

    Counsel for plaintiffs in American Association of University Professors v. U.S. Department of Justice

    Lead Counsel

    Argued case in Cockrum v. Donald J. Trump for President as lead counsel for plaintiffs.

    News

    Richard Primus
    News

    5Qs: Richard Primus’s New Book Asks the Oldest Constitutional Question

    In the Media

    The Atlantic

    Trump’s Third-Term Ambitions Are Very Revealing

    Folha de S.Paulo

    The US has fewer deputies than Brazil; find out how the total number of parliamentarians is defined

    Michigan Public

    MI Supreme Court set to lean even more progressive after Whitmer appointment

    CBC News

    Trump takes aim at WilmerHale law firm, citing ties to lawyer Robert Mueller

    Reuters

    Why target these law firms? For Trump, it's personal

    Michigan Public

    Stateside

    See All