Richard Primus

The University of Michigan Law School

Richard Primus is the Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where he teaches the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution. His work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies in 2008. Professor Primus holds an A.B. summa cum laude in social studies from Harvard College, a D. Phil. in politics from Balliol College, Oxford, and a J.D. from Yale.

Richard Primus's Articles

Constitutional Law

Rulebooks, Playgrounds, and Endgames: A Constitutional Analysis of the Calabresi-Hirji Judgeship Proposal

November 24, 2017

Steven Calabresi and Shams Hirji have posted a co-written paper* calling on Congress to legislate a major expansion of the lower federal courts. The document is remarkable in at least two respects. First, it showcases the difference between legislation that Congress has the formal authority to enact and legislation that is compatible with the small-c…

First Amendment

Unbundling the First Amendment: Lessons from an Impeachment

March 1, 2021

A broad consensus of legal analysts—joined, it seems, by most senators of both political parties—recognizes that former President Donald Trump did not have a valid First Amendment defense at his second impeachment trial. But the discussion that the trial occasioned about First Amendment defenses in impeachment trials suffered from a lack of precision about what…