Tom Donnelly

Tom Donnelly teaches and writes in the field of constitutional law. His specialties include constitutional theory, American political development, civic education, and American constitutional history. To date, his scholarship has focused on a variety of topics, including popular constitutionalism, originalism, Supreme Court legitimacy, the role of the Supreme Court nomination process in the constitutional politics of Reconstruction, and the constitutional lessons that schools have taught American high school students over time.

Professor Donnelly has served as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, as the Chief Content Officer at the National Constitution Center, as a Lecturer in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Political Science, as Counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, and as a law clerk for the Hon. Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Donnelly is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he was a Projects Editor for The Yale Law Journal and a Coker Fellow. While at Yale, Donnelly also received the Judge William E. Miller Prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights. Tom’s academic writings have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Wisconsin Law Review, the B.Y.U. Law Review, the UC Davis Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, and Constitutional Commentary, among other law journals, and he has written popular pieces for various outlets, including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Politico, Slate, Washington Monthly, Talking Points Memo, CNN, The Huffington Post, The Hill, and several regional newspapers throughout the country. Before receiving his law degree, Donnelly worked as an analyst at the Mellman Group, a polling firm.