About Douglas W. Kmiec

Douglas W. Kmiec is Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University. He served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, a position previously held by the late Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia in the Nixon and Ford administrations. (Kmiec started out in the Justice Department sharing an office with another young lawyer, Sam Alito). Professor Kmiec is the former Dean and St. Thomas More Professor of the law school at The Catholic University of America, where his high standards for intellectual rigor, faculty and student recruitment, and positive faith commitment helped moved the CUA law school into the upper tier of the U.S. News rankings. For nearly two decades, Professor Kmiec was also a member of the law faculty at the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, he directed the Thomas White Center on Law & Government and founded the Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. Professor Kmiec has been a White House Fellow, a Distinguished Fulbright Scholar on the Constitution (in Asia), the inaugural Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the National Constitution Center and the recipient of numerous additional honors. His published work is wide-ranging, including four books on the American Constitution, several legal treatises and related books, and hundreds of published articles and essays. He is a frequent guest in the media analyzing constitutional, cultural, and political developments. With his wife, Carolyn Keenan Kmiec the director of a fine arts program for disadvantaged children at Pepperdine, he has five children, two of whom have taken up the law as their vocation.

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