James C. Phillips
Professor Dr. James C. Phillips comes to St. Thomas University College of Law as an Associate Professor of Law having previously been an associate professor at Brigham Young University and the director of BYU’s Constitutional Government Initiative at the Wheatley Institute. Prior to that, he was an associate professor of law at Chapman University.
Professor Phillips has a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy and J.D., both from UC-Berkeley. He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Judge Thomas B. Griffith) and the Utah Supreme Court (Justice Thomas R. Lee). He has worked in private practice and for a public interest law firm, focusing primarily in the areas of constitutional litigation, with a heavy emphasis on religious liberty and parental rights.
Professor Phillips has published nearly 40 academic articles and has been cited by courts around the country, including at the U.S. Supreme Court. He regularly trains federal and state judges on constitutional interpretation.
Scholarship & Research
Articles:
Corpus Linguistics and the Original Public Meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment, 73 Duke L.J. Online 159 (2024) (with Thomas R. Lee, Lawrence B. Solum & Jesse A. Egbert)
A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of “Possessions” in American English, 1760-1776, 27 Chapman L. Rev. 143 (2024)
The Linguistic Style of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, 127 Penn. St. L. Rev. Penn. Statim 1 (2022)
Which Original Public?, 25 Chap. L. Rev. 333 (2022)
A Corpus Linguistics Analysis of “Foreign Tribunal,” 108 Va. L. Rev. Online 207 (2022) (with Jesse Egbert)
Corpus Linguistics and Heller, 56 Wake Forest L. Rev. 609 (2021) (with Josh Blackman)
You’re Fired: The Original Meaning of Presidential Impeachment, 94 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1191 (2021) (with John Yoo)
Data-driven Originalism, 167 U. Penn. L. Rev. 261 (2019) (with Thomas Lee)
Corpus Linguistics and “Officers of the United States”, 42 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 871 (2019) (with Benjamin Lee & Jacob Crump)
Political Discrimination and Law Professor Hiring, 12 N.Y.U. J. of L. & Liberty 560 (2019)
Courses
- Civil Procedure
- Professional Responsibility