Professor of Law Emeritus
Education
LL.M. (Comparative and International Law), Duke University
J.D., Duke University
M.A., Hollins College
B.A., Harvard College
Read Epps' New York Times book review of Jeffrey Toobin's book The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court.
Areas of Expertise
Advanced Topics in Constitutional Law
Creative Writing
Constitutional Law I
Professor Garrett Epps joined the University of Baltimore School of Law in 2008 and retired in June 2020. He taught courses in Constitutional Law, First Amendment, and Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing for Law Students. He is a contributing writer to The Atlantic Online and serves as the magazine's Supreme Court correspondent. He is also a contributing editor of The American Prospect. Epps' most recent book, American Justice 2014: Nine Clashing Visions on the Supreme Court, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Epps' previous book, American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution, was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. In March 2014, American Epic was named a finalist for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Book award. Two of his previous books, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America (2006) and To an Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial (2001), were both also Silver Gavel finalists. A former staff writer for The Washington Post, Epps has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic and The American Prospect.
Epps received his LL.M. in Comparative and International Law and his J.D. from Duke University, where he served as articles editor of Law and Contemporary Problems and graduated with the Willis Smith Award for the highest three-year academic average. Before attending law school, Epps earned his M.A. in English Writing in 1975 from Hollins College and his B.A. in 1972 from Harvard College, where he was editor of The Harvard Crimson.
Selected Publications
Books and Book Chapters (Nonfiction)
American Justice 2014: Nine Clashing Visions on the Supreme Court (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Wrong and Dangerous: Ten Right-Wing Myths about Our Constitution (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2012).
Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2006). Finalist for 2006 Silver Gavel Book Award of the American Bar Association.
To an Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial (New York: St. Martin's, 2001). Finalist for 2002 Silver Gavel Book Award of the American Bar Association. Selected by Georgetown University Law Center as required reading for all entering students, Fall 2005.
Books (Novels)
The Floating Island: A Tale of Washington (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
The Shad Treatment (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons Inc., 1977, republished 1995 by University Press of Virginia).
Articles and Essays
Reagan’s Court v. the Libertarians (reviewing Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare by Josh Blackman; The Roberts Court: The Struggle for the Constitution by Marcia Coyle; The Tough-Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care by Andrew Koppleman; and In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court by Mark Tushnet), The American Prospect (Sept.18, 2013).
Interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment: Two Don'ts and Three Dos, 16 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal (2007).
Lecture: Second Founding: The Story of the Fourteenth Amendment, 85 Or. L. Rev. (2006).
Some Animals are More Equal than Others: The Rehnquist Court and Majority Religion, 21 Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 323 (2006).
The Other Sullivan Case, 1 New York University Journal of Law & Liberty 783 (2005).
'You Have Been in Afghanistan': A Discourse on the Van Alstyne Method, 54 Duke L. J. 1555 (2005).
Symposium: Bruce Springsteen and the American Lawyer: Meanness in This World, 14 Widener L. Rev. 847 (2005).
(Translator) Ignacio Gomez Palacio, With a Note in My Hand (El Pagaro en la Mano), 7 Ore. Rev. Intl L. 304 (2005).
The Undiscovered Country: Northern Views of the Defeated South and the Political Background of the Fourteenth Amendment, 13 Temp. Pol. & Civ. Rts. L. Rev. 411 (2004).
The Antebellum Political Background of the Fourteenth Amendment, 67 Law & Contemp. Probs. 175 (2004).
Speech: The Bill of Rights, 82 Ore. L. Rev. 517 (2004).
The Story of Al Smith: The First Amendment Meets Grandfather Peyote. Michael Dorf, ed., Constitutional Law Stories (New York: Foundation Press, 2004).
The Amish and the American Oyster. Donald Kraybill, ed., The Amish and the State (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2d ed., 2003).