Josh Blackman constitutional law scholarship sits at the intersection of academic rigour, libertarian commentary, and increasingly prominent public-policy work, with the South Texas College of Law Houston professor now holding the Centennial Chair in Constitutional Law, a position he has occupied since 2023.
Blackman joined the Houston faculty in 2012 as an assistant professor and was promoted to full professor in 2018 before being elevated to the Centennial Chair. His scholarship focuses on constitutional law, with commentary published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times, alongside more than two dozen law review articles.
Academic Affiliations and the Josh Blackman Constitutional Law Platform
Beyond his faculty role, Blackman serves as an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank based in Washington, DC. He earned his J.D. from George Mason University School of Law and his undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University, and was selected by Forbes Magazine for its 30 Under 30 list in Law and Policy.
He is also the founder of FantasySCOTUS, described as the internet’s premier Supreme Court fantasy league, which engages public audiences in predicting the outcomes of cases before the court.
In the area of religious liberty, the STCL Houston newsroom confirmed that President Trump appointed Blackman to the Advisory Board of a Religious Liberty Commission, marking a formal governmental role alongside his academic and think-tank work.
The Harlan Institute and Student Engagement
Blackman co-founded and serves as President of the Harlan Institute, a legal education organisation whose board of directors includes Ilya Shapiro as Secretary and Stephen Richer as Treasurer and Director of Outreach. The institute takes its name from Justice John Marshall Harlan, whose dissenting opinions on civil rights cases have attracted renewed scholarly attention in recent decades.
Its flagship programme is the Virtual Supreme Court Competition, now in its 14th annual edition. The competition is designed to help students develop the analytical and advocacy skills required to understand and argue reasoned legal positions on timely constitutional questions.
Blackman’s commentary appears regularly on Reason, the libertarian magazine published by the Reason Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation supported by voluntary contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations. The magazine was first published in 1968 by Lanny Friedlander as a mimeographed publication before Robert Poole, Manuel S. Klausner, and Tibor R. Machan placed it on a regular schedule from 1970 onwards.
With a Religious Liberty Commission advisory role now added to his portfolio, the next question is whether Blackman’s government-facing work will generate the kind of formal submissions or published opinions that feed directly back into the constitutional law literature he has spent more than a decade building.
