Geoffrey R. Stone

Geoffrey R. Stone

Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School

Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. After serving as a law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States, Stone joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School in 1973. Stone has served as Dean of the University of Chicago Law School (1987-1994) and Provost of the University of Chicago (1994-2002).

Stone is the author or co-author of many books on constitutional law (some are edited collections of essays by distinguished experts). Here are just some examples: Roe v. Doe: The Past, Present and Future of the Constitutional Right of Abortion (2023); Affirmative Action: Its Intent, Its Impact and Its Future (2023); Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy (2022); Leaks, National Security and Freedom of the Press (2021); Democracy and Equality: The Enduring Constitutional Vision of the Warren Court (2020); The Free Speech Century (2018); Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion and Law: From America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century (2007); and Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime (2004), which received eight national book awards. Stone is the co-editor of two of the nation’s leading constitutional law casebooks, chief editor of a twenty-five volume series, Inalienable Rights, which is published by the Oxford University Press, and he is an editor of the Supreme Court Review.

Stone is a former chair of the Board of the American Constitution Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Law Institute, and the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 2013, President Obama appointed Stone to serve on a five-member Review Group on National Security Intelligence in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA. The result was The NSA Report, which included 46 recommendations for improving the nation’s foreign intelligence programs, many of which have been adopted. Thereafter, Stone served as a Senior Advisor to the Director of National Intelligence.

In 2014, Stone chaired the committee that wrote the University of Chicago’s Statement on Free Expression, which has since been adopted by almost one hundred colleges and universities across the nation.

Stone is currently putting together a volume of Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, on The Future of Free Speech.