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, 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 T
he 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 NROs 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 MA (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.
Articles
in Public Discourse