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Jack McPherrin

Senior Policy Analyst, Research Fellow

Jack is a Senior Policy Analyst and Research Fellow at The Heartland Institute. He is a classical liberal constitutionalist in the Madisonian tradition, emphasizing institutional legitimacy and durability, self-government, individual liberty, and structural constraints on concentrated authority—wherever it resides.

Jack’s analysis focuses on the erosion of institutional governance and its consequences for legitimacy and effective self-government, including congressional abdication; judicial displacement of legislative authority; delegated monetary power; the entrenchment of the administrative state; executive aggrandizement; the normalization of emergency powers; degradations of federalism; and extraterritorial regulatory regimes that undermine domestic accountability. He applies this analytical framework to contemporary policy debates with an eye toward institutional repair, examining how structural failures manifest and interact across policy domains such as technology, finance, health care, and energy.

Jack writes and edits across formats, producing substantial long-form analysis as well as concise public- and policy-facing work, and regularly shepherds research projects from conception through publication. He engages with policymakers at the federal and state levels, media professionals, and other stakeholders to bring institutional analysis to bear on real-world governance challenges.

His work has been published by The Hill, Fox News, RealClearMarkets, and the Washington Examiner, among others. He is also the coauthor of The Next Big Crash, which analyzes the legal and institutional foundations of the modern financial system and their implications for property rights and investor asset security under conditions of financial stress and crisis governance.

Jack lives in Chicago and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Loyola University Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in economics and history from Boston College.