Michael W. McConnell

Michael W. McConnell is a former United States circuit judge who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from 2002 to 2009. Born in 1955, he was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by the Senate in November 2002. Following his resignation from the judiciary in 2009, McConnell returned to academia and has since held positions at Stanford Law School, where he became a professor and director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, as well as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has also served as senior counsel to a major law firm and was appointed to Facebook's content oversight board in 2020. McConnell is widely recognized as a leading constitutional law scholar, particularly in matters concerning religious liberty and the structural limits of executive power.

Early life and legal career

McConnell received his undergraduate education at Michigan State University, graduating from the James Madison College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976. He then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he earned his Juris Doctor in 1979. During his time at Chicago, he served as an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review, an academic journal that publishes legal scholarship.

Following his graduation from law school, McConnell embarked on a distinguished legal career that combined both public service and academia. He began with a clerkship for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, serving from 1979 to 1980. He then clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. from 1980 to 1981, gaining valuable experience in the nation's highest court. After completing his clerkships, McConnell entered government service, working as an assistant general counsel at the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1983, followed by a position as an assistant to the Solicitor General from 1983 to 1985.

In 1985, McConnell transitioned to academia, joining the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School, where he remained until 1996. During his tenure at Chicago, he established himself as a prominent legal scholar and teacher. In one notable instance, he brought a young Barack Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review, to the law school on a fellowship after being impressed by a suggestion Obama had made regarding one of McConnell's scholarly articles. Beyond his time at Chicago, McConnell also held faculty positions at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and served as a visiting professor at both Harvard Law School and New York University School of Law.

As a legal scholar, McConnell published extensively on constitutional law topics and edited several books. His academic work focused particularly on the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment, areas in which he became recognized as one of the preeminent scholars in the field. He also maintained an active litigation practice, arguing cases before federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. Among his notable Supreme Court arguments was Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, in which he secured a narrow victory in a case decided by a vote of five to four.

McConnell's scholarship addressed fundamental questions of constitutional interpretation. He engaged with the methodology of originalism, arguing that this interpretive approach was consistent with the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education, countering critics who contended that originalism and Brown were incompatible. He also analyzed the Court's decision in Bolling v. Sharpe, arguing that while the outcome was correct, it should have been reached on different legal grounds, noting that Congress had never mandated segregation in the schools of the District of Columbia.

In 1996, McConnell signed a public statement supporting a constitutional amendment to prohibit abortion. The statement characterized abortion as killing innocent human beings and identified what it termed an "abortion license" as a significant factor in what the signatories described as America's virtue deficit. McConnell also offered critical commentary on the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the case that effectively resolved the 2000 presidential election. He expressed disappointment that the Court had failed to bring closure to the matter and suggested that the decision's combination of holdings would satisfy no one.

Federal appellate service

President George W. Bush, a Republican, nominated McConnell to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on September 4, 2001. The nomination proceeded through the Senate confirmation process over the following year. On November 15, 2002, the Senate confirmed McConnell by voice vote, indicating unanimous or near-unanimous support. He received his commission on November 26, 2002, and assumed his duties on the court, which hears appeals from federal district courts in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as certain administrative agencies.

During his tenure on the Tenth Circuit, McConnell authored judicial opinions on a range of legal issues. His work on the bench drew attention from the Supreme Court, which reviewed four cases in which he had written opinions. In each of these four cases, the Supreme Court reached the same result that McConnell had reached in the lower court, affirming his legal reasoning. One such case was Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, decided by the Supreme Court in 2006. This case involved the religious use of a hallucinogenic tea and raised questions under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Supreme Court affirmed the Tenth Circuit's en banc decision by a vote of eight to zero; McConnell had written a concurring opinion in the Tenth Circuit proceeding. Another case that reached the Supreme Court was Fernandez-Vargas v. Gonzales, decided in 2008, which concerned the retroactive application of a statutory provision that limited appeals from immigration removal orders.

McConnell served on the Tenth Circuit for approximately seven years before resigning from the bench on August 31, 2009. His departure from the federal judiciary allowed him to return to academic life and pursue other professional opportunities.

Jurisprudence and legacy

Following his resignation from the bench, McConnell joined the faculty of Stanford Law School in 2009, where he became a professor and assumed the role of Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He also became a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank. In addition to his academic roles, he took a position as senior of counsel to the litigation practice group at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. In May 2020, Facebook appointed him to serve on its content oversight board, a body established to review content moderation decisions on the social media platform.

McConnell has continued to contribute to public discourse on constitutional matters through scholarship, public commentary, and advocacy. In 2020, he published a book titled "The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power under the Constitution" through Princeton University Press, examining the scope and limits of presidential authority. His ongoing scholarly work has addressed contemporary constitutional controversies, including questions about religious liberty during public health emergencies. He expressed skepticism on First Amendment grounds regarding certain restrictions on religious exercise that were imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, McConnell's legal analysis regarding the second impeachment of President Donald Trump received widespread attention. He argued that Trump could be tried by the Senate after leaving office because the impeachment had occurred while Trump was still in office. This argument was frequently cited during Senate debates on the matter and in media coverage of the impeachment proceedings.

In 2025, McConnell co-authored a prominent amicus curiae brief with attorney Joshua Claybourn in the case of V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, a federal lawsuit challenging tariff and import tax policies implemented by President Trump. The brief assembled a coalition of constitutional scholars, former judges, and senior public officials from diverse political backgrounds. Signatories included Steven Calabresi, a co-founder of the Federalist Society; constitutional scholar Richard Epstein; former Attorney General Michael Mukasey; former U.S. Senators George Allen, John Danforth, and Chuck Hagel; and legal academics Harold Koh, Alan Sykes, and Gerard Magliocca. The brief emphasized that the American Republic's endurance depends not only on democratic elections but also on faithful adherence to the Constitution's structural limitations on executive power. The brief was described as influential in decisions by two district courts that overturned the challenged tariffs. McConnell further elaborated on his involvement and the underlying legal issues in an opinion piece published in the New York Times, stressing the importance of maintaining constitutional constraints on executive authority.

Throughout his career, McConnell has maintained a focus on fundamental questions of constitutional structure, individual rights, and the proper interpretation of constitutional text. His work as a scholar, advocate, and judge has contributed to ongoing debates about religious freedom, separation of powers, and the role of originalism in constitutional interpretation. His brief tenure on the federal bench, combined with his extensive academic career before and after, has established him as a significant figure in American constitutional law.