The Rights Retained by the People: The Ninth Amendment and Constitutional Interpretation

Randy E. Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in Chicago. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern and Harvard Law School. In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies. In 2004, Barnett appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue the medical cannabis case of Gonzalez v. Raich. He lectures internationally and has appeared on radio and television programs such as the CBS Evening News, PBS NewsHour, Talk of the Nation (NPR), Hannity & Colmes (FOX), and the Ricki Lake Show. He delivered the Kobe 2000 lectures in jurisprudence at the University of Tokyo and Doshisha University in Kyoto. Barnett’s scholarship includes more than 80 articles and reviews as well as 8 books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton, 2004), Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (Aspen 2008), Contracts Cases and Doctrine (Aspen, 4th ed. 2008), and Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (Broadside Books, 2016).