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Ilya Shapiro

Ilya Shapiro

Ilya Shapiro is a vice president of the Cato Institute, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was a special assistant/​adviser to the Multi‐​National Force in Iraq on rule‐​of‐​law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb.

Shapiro is the author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008–18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles TimesUSA TodayNational Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, is a legal consultant to CBS News, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.

Shapiro has testified before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 400 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court, including one that The Green Bag selected for its “Exemplary Legal Writing” collection. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 2015, National Law Journal named him to its 40 under 40 list of “rising stars.”

Before entering private practice, Shapiro clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School (where he became a Tony Patiño Fellow).

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Guest Appearances
July 7, 2021

Can Unions Demand Access to Your Property?

A recent Supreme Court case answers that question plus much more.

October 9, 2020

Nominations, Politics, & Contention: a Historical Look at our Supreme Court

Have Supreme Court nominations always been this contentious? Ilya Shapiro of the CATO Institute walks us through the history of our highest court.

September 11, 2020

Voter Fraud and Vulnerabilities of Mail-In Ballots

Vote integrity and voter fraud. How accurate will the 2020 elections be? Ilya Shapiro from the CATO Institute explains it all.

June 26, 2020

SCOTUS blocks POTUS on DACA Rescission

Ilya Shapiro of the CATO Institute tells us why the Supreme Court blocked the Trump Administration’s rescission of DACA.