Clint Bolick
Research Fellow

Expertise: Constitutional litigation, with an emphasis on 14th Amendment, school choice, First Amendment, economic regulation, property rights and eminent domain, federalism, local government, and state constitutional law.

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Clint Bolick is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and also serves as the director of the Goldwater Institute Center for Constitutional Litigation in Phoenix.

A legal pioneer in a number of areas, Bolick is perhaps best known for his leadership in defending state-based school choice programs. He has argued and won significant cases in both state and federal courts, winning school choice victories in the Supreme Courts of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Arizona, as well as in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris before the Supreme Court of the United States. He also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court the challenge to regulatory barriers to the direct shipment of wine to consumers in the United States.

Before joining the Goldwater Institute, Mr. Bolick was cofounder and former vice president of the Institute for Justice and former president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Bolick helped lead the effort to increase judicial scrutiny of racial classifications in areas such as public employment and interracial adoptions. He also designed a legal strategy to restore judicial recognition of economic liberty, which resulted in several landmark rulings invalidating regulatory barriers to enterprise.

Bolick is the author of several books, including Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice and Leviathan:The Growth of Local Government & the Erosion of Liberty. His most recent book, David’s Hammer:The Case for an Activist Judiciary, was released in April 2007.

The recipient of many honors, Bolick was named one of three Lawyers of the Year in 2003 by American Lawyer. In 2006, Bolick was the recipient of a Bradley Prize for excellence in “strengthening American democratic capitalism.” His most recent book, David’s Hammer, was chosen for the June 2007 Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing the Literature of Liberty. In 2008, Legal Times named Bolick one of the the “90 greatest Washington lawyers of the past 30 years.”

Bolick received his law degree from the University of California at Davis in 1982 and his undergraduate degree from Drew University in 1979.