William Baude

William Patrick Baude is an American legal scholar focusing on United States constitutional law. He is a law professor at the University of Chicago.

Baude joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School as an assistant professor in 2014 and received tenure in 2018. He was named the Harry Kalven Jr. Professor of Law in 2023 and founded the Constitutional Law Institute at the law school in 2020.

Baude became known for coining the term "shadow docket" in 2015 to describe a practice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Early life and education Baude is the son of Patrick L. Baude (1943–2011) and Julia C. Lamber (1947–), who were professors at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law from 1968 to 2008.

Baude graduated from the University of Chicago, where he was a member of Sigma Xi, in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics. He then attended Yale Law School, where he was an articles and essay editor of the Yale Law Journal. He graduated in 2007 with a Juris Doctor.

Career Legal practice After graduating from law school, Baude was a law clerk to Judge Michael W. McConnell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from 2007 to 2008 and to Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2008 to 2009. He teaches constitutional law, federal courts, and conflicts of law.

Baude coined the term "shadow docket" in 2015 to describe actions taken by the United States Supreme Court outside its regular, fully briefed and argued cases.

Social engagement Baude is a co-editor of the University Casebook Series' The Constitution of the United States (4th ed., 2021). Baude is among the most cited active scholars of constitutional law in the United States.

Baude writes for the Volokh Conspiracy blog, and has contributed to the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. He also co-hosts a podcast, Divided Argument, with law professor Daniel Epps on which they discuss recent Supreme Court decisions.

On April 9, 2021, Baude, together with fellow faculty members David A. Strauss and Alison LaCroix at the University of Chicago Law School, was appointed by United States President Joe Biden to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. On December 12, 2022, Baude wrote to Senator Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to support the nomination of P. Casey Pitts to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

In August 2023, Baude and legal scholar Michael Stokes Paulsen released an article entitled "The Sweep and Force of Section Three", later published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, arguing that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution disqualified Donald Trump from holding political office in the United States because of his participation in the attempt to overturn the election of Joe Biden as president.

Baude is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He received the Paul M. Bator Award by the Federalist Society in 2017.

Selected works