A Life for Liberty

"Law professors with a strong commitment to liberty and the Constitution are all too rare. That’s right, I said it. Randy Barnett has walked the walk as well as talked the talk. In this book, he shows how it’s done."

—Mark Levin, author of Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto





"Randy Barnett is in a category by himself. His pioneering contrarianism made it acceptable to believe that the Court should side with liberty against encroachments by both state and federal government."

—Rand Paul, US Senator (R-KY), author of The Case Against Socialism




From prosecuting murderers in Chicago, to arguing before the Supreme Court, to authoring more than a dozen books, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett has played an integral role in the rise of originalism—the movement to identify, restore, and defend the original meaning of the Constitution. Thanks in part to his efforts, by 2018 a majority of sitting Supreme Court justices self-identified as “originalists.” 

After writing seminal books on libertarianism and contract law, Barnett pivoted to constitutional law. His mission to restore "the lost Constitution" took him from the schoolhouse to the courthouse, where he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzeles v. Raich in the Supreme Court—a case now taught to every law student. Later, he devised and spearheaded the constitutional challenge to Obamacare.
All this earned him major profiles in such publications as the  Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. Now he recounts his compelling journey from a working-class kid in Calumet City, Illinois to “Washington Power Breaker,” as the Congressional Quarterly Weekly called him.

In A Life for Liberty, Barnett writes candidly about his career strategies, and how he overcame his outsider status, his insecurities, and the mistakes he made along the way. The engaging story of his rise from obscurity to one of the most influential thinkers in America is an inspiring how-to guide for anyone seeking real-world advancement of justice and liberty for all.