Mark Brandon

Mark Brandon is the Thomas E. McMillan Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. He served as Dean of the School of Law from 2014 to 2023. He received his B.A. (summa in History) from the University of Montevallo, the J.D. from the University of Alabama, an M.A. (Political Science) from the University of Michigan, and the Ph.D. (Politics) from Princeton University. Mark began his legal career as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Alabama, where he focused on environmental enforcement. He later served as consumer litigation coordinator for Legal Services Corporation of Alabama, and then went into private practice, first in Birmingham, Alabama, and later in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he handled appellate cases involving constitutional issues. Since moving to academia, his teaching has included constitutional law, interpretation, and theory, jurisprudence, and legal process. He is the author of Free in the World: American Slavery and Constitutional Failure, which explores the various forms of constitutional failure in the events leading up to the American Civil War. His second book, States of Union: Family and Change in the American Constitutional Order, was a finalist for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. He has published essays and articles on secession, federalism, limits to the amending power, war and constitutional change, and constitutional interpretation. His essay on “Constitutionalism” appears in the Oxford Handbook on the United States Constitution. Mark was a Visiting Senior Research Scholar in the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University in 2008-09. He has taught in law and political science at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Michigan, Vanderbilt University, Princeton University, and the University of Alabama. He was born on an Army base in Georgia and grew up in Birmingham.