Insights Fall 2020

Constitutional Law

Does the Constitution protect the dead?

Professor Smith's research focuses on accountability, federal jurisdiction, and state sovereignty. His work has appeared in Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, New York University Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and other academic journals. He lectures on related topics both here and abroad and has also served as an expert source for news media including the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and National Public Radio.

Smith clerked for Judge Myron Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama; Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Supreme Court. Before joining the academy, he worked for Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore LLP, in Atlanta. And prior to joining Emory Law in 2017, Brown taught at UC Berkeley School of Law and has since served as Walter V. Schaefer Visiting Associate Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Smith currently leads the search, launched this fall, to fill Emory Law’s John Lewis Chair for Civil Rights and Social Justice. His volunteer work promotes equity and social justice. Smith serves on the board of Invest Atlanta, the Atlanta’s Mayoral LGBTQ Advisory Board; the national board of Lambda Legal; the national board of Civil Rights Corps; and the LGBT Advisory Board of Historic Atlanta. He was a founding member of BeltLine Rail Now, which advocates for transit on Atlanta’s critical corridors. Smith was also an inaugural advisory board member for the Harvard Debate Council Diversity Project, which trains Black Atlanta youth in critical thinking and public speaking.

Read the abstract | introduction

Selected Publications

The Constitution After Death, 120 Columbia Law Review 1471(2020)

Abstention in the Time of Ferguson, 131 Harvard Law Review 2283 (2018)

Undemocratic Restraint, 69 Vanderbilt Law Review 845 (2017)

Local Sovereign Immunity, 116 Columbia Law Review 409 (2016)

Due Process, Republicanism, and Direct Democracy, 89 New York University Law Review 582 (2014)