Matthew J. Franck

Matthew J. Franck is Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution of the Witherspoon Institute. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University in Virginia where he taught constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy from 1989 to 2010, and chaired the Department of Political Science from 1995 until his retirement. Dr. Franck was a Henry J. Salvatori Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 1993-95, J. William Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea, 1998, and a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, 2008-09. He was the recipient of the Radford University Foundation Award for Creative Scholarship in 2001. 

He is author of Against the Imperial Judiciary: The Supreme Court vs. the Sovereignty of the People (University Press of Kansas, 1996); co-editor/co-author with Richard G. Stevens, Sober As a Judge: The Supreme Court and Republican Liberty (Lexington, 1999); and contributor to History of American Political Thought (Frost and Sikkenga, eds., Lexington, 2003), The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (Meese, Spalding, and Forte, eds., Regnery, 2005), Ourselves and Our Posterity: Essays in Constitutional Originalism (Watson, ed., Lexington, 2009), and Print the Legend: Politics, Culture, and Civic Virtue in the Films of John Ford (Pearson, ed., Lexington, 2009). Franck is the author of the forthcoming Strict Scrutiny: Sense and Nonsense on the Supreme Court (Rowman & Littlefield), and of a new critical introduction to Edward S. Corwin’s The Doctrine of Judicial Review (Transaction; orig. pub. 1914). He has published essays and reviews in The Review of Politics, Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of Politics, Law and Politics Book Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Texas Review of Law and Politics, Catholic Social Science Review, Academic Questions, Claremont Review of Books, Engage: The Journal of the Federalist Society Practice Groups, Public Discourse, and National Review/National Review Online.

Dr. Franck is a regular blogger on NRO’s Bench Memos page, and has appeared numerous times on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio show. He has testified before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, and given presentations at meetings of the American Political Science Association and the Midwest, Southern, and Southwestern Political Science Associations, as well as by invitation to the Council of Appellate Staff Attorneys, the Heritage Foundation, the Institute of United States Studies at the University of London, Notre Dame Law School, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and the Culture and Policy Conference at Saint Vincent College. 

He received his BA (magna cum laude) in 1980 from Virginia Wesleyan College, and his M.A. (1982) and PhD (1992) from Northern Illinois University. He is married to Dr. Gwen Brown, Professor Emerita of Communication at Radford University, and Visiting Professor of Communication at Rider University.

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