Garrett Epps

Garrett Epps (born 1950) is an American legal scholar, novelist, and journalist. He was professor of law at the University of Baltimore until his retirement in June 2020; previously he was the Orlando J. and Marian H. Hollis Professor of Law at the University of Oregon.^[1]

Epps attended St. Christopher's School and Harvard College, where he was president of The Harvard Crimson .^[2] He later received an M.A. degree in Creative Writing from Hollins University, and a J.D. degree from Duke University, where he was first in his class. After graduation from Harvard, he was a cofounder of The Richmond Mercury, a short-lived alternative weekly whose alumni include Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Frank Rich and Glenn Frankel. He also worked as an editor or reporter for The Richmond Afro-American, The Virginia Churchman, The Free Lance–Star , and The Washington Post . From 1983 until 1988, he was a columnist for Independent Weekly (then a bi-weekly). Immediately before moving to the University of Oregon, he spent a year clerking for Judge John D. Butzner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Epps has written two novels, including The Shad Treatment , which won the Lillian Smith Book Award, as well as the nonfiction books To An Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial , which was published in 2001 and was a finalist for the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, and Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Civil Rights in Post-Civil War America , which was published in 2006. Democracy Reborn won the 2007 Oregon Book Award for non-fiction, and was a finalist for the ABA Silver Gavel Award. He has also written numerous articles and opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines including the New York Times , The Washington Post , and The Atlantic . In his article "The Founders' Great Mistake",^[3] he urged America to amend its Constitution to more closely resemble a parliamentary system.

• The Shad Treatment (1977)
• The Floating Island: A Tale of Washington (1985)
• To An Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial (2001)
• Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Civil Rights in Post-Civil War America (2006)
• Peyote vs the State: Religious Freedom on Trial (2009)
• Wrong and Dangerous: Ten Right-Wing Myths About Our Constitution (2012)
• American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution (2013)

• American scholars of constitutional law
• American legal writers
• The Harvard Crimson people
• University of Baltimore faculty
• University of Oregon faculty
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American novelists
• 21st-century American novelists
• 20th-century American male writers
• 21st-century American male writers
• American male non-fiction writers
• American male novelists
• Duke University School of Law alumni
• Harvard College alumni
• Hollins University alumni
• Lawyers from Richmond, Virginia
• Writers from Richmond, Virginia
• Journalists from Virginia
• Novelists from Virginia
• Novelists from Maryland
• Novelists from Oregon
• 1950 births
• Living people

• Articles with short description
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