Randy E. Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts. He has also taught torts, criminal law, evidence, agency and partnership, and jurisprudence. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States' Attorney's Office in Chicago. In November 2004, he appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue the medical cannabis case of Gonzalez v. Raich, after successfully arguing in the Ninth Circuit in 2003. He also represents the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative and coauthored an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.

Professor Barnett lectures internationally and appears frequently on radio and television programs such as the CBS Evening News, The News Hour (PBS), Talk of the Nation (NPR), and the Ricki Lake Show. He delivered the Kobe 2000 lectures in jurisprudence at the University of Tokyo and Doshisha University in Kyoto, a series that previously featured Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz and Will Kimlicka. He has also lectured on contract law theory at Waseda University (Tokyo) and on criminal justice theory at Kansai University (Osaka) and has been a visiting professor at Northwestern and Harvard Law School.

Professor Barnett's scholarship includes more than eighty articles and reviews, as well as seven books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, (Princeton, 2004), which was awarded the Lysander Spooner Book Award for the best book on liberty for 2004,Contracts Cases and Doctrine (Aspen, 3rd ed. 2003) and Perspectives on Contract Law (Aspen, 3rd ed. 2005). His book The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford, 1998) was awarded the Ralph Gregory Elliot Book Award and has been translated into Japanese. His working papers can be found here.

Professor Barnett is a senior fellow of the Cato Institute in Washington DC. In Chicago, he was the Legal Affairs Contributor for WBEZ (NPR) where he broadcast a 15-hour series on the Bill of Rights. In 2007, he played an assistant prosecutor in the film InAlienable, which stars Richard Hatch, Courtney Peldon, Marina Sirtis, Erick Avari, and Walter Koenig. (to watch a video interview from the set, click below)