Daniel Epps
Howard and Caroline Cayne Distinguished Professor of Law
Washington University in St. Louis
I write and teach about constitutional law and theory, the federal courts, criminal law and procedure, and the U.S. Supreme Court. My scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, and other leading journals, and I also write for general audiences and comment frequently on the Supreme Court.
Before joining WashU Law, I was a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School and an appellate specialist at King & Spalding, and I clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. My curriculum vitae has the full record.
Writing
- Constitutional Rights and General Private Lawwith Danielle D'Onfro · 140 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2027)How the background principles of private law shape the content of constitutional rights.
- Reading the Justices' Books140 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2027)A review essay on the books written by sitting Supreme Court Justices.
- Justifying the Fourth Amendment79 Vand. L. Rev. 1 (2026)A constitutional-theory account of why search-and-seizure protections belong in entrenched constitutional law.
- The Practice of Executive Constitutionalismwith Conor Clarke · 111 Va. L. Rev. 1531 (2025)An account of how the Executive Branch interprets and implements the Constitution.
- The False Promise of Jurisdiction Strippingwith Alan M. Trammell · 123 Colum. L. Rev. 2077 (2023)Why stripping federal courts of jurisdiction rarely delivers the control its proponents expect.
- The Fourth Amendment and General Lawwith Danielle D'Onfro · 132 Yale L.J. 910 (2023)Recovering the general law that once supplied the Fourth Amendment's content.
- How to Save the Supreme Courtwith Ganesh Sitaraman · 129 Yale L.J. 148 (2019)Two structural proposals for reducing the stakes of Supreme Court appointments.
Teaching
- Constitutional Law
- Federal Courts
- Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure: Investigation
- Criminal Procedure: Adjudication
- Public Law Theory
Projects
- Washington University School of Law
- Howard and Caroline Cayne Distinguished Professor of Law.
- Divided Argument
- An unscheduled, unpredictable Supreme Court podcast, co-hosted with William Baude and produced in partnership with SCOTUSblog.
- Wilkinson Stekloff
- Of Counsel, advising on appellate, constitutional, and regulatory issues arising in high-stakes litigation.
Software
- Bluebook tools for Zotero
- A Bluebook citation style for Zotero, plus plugins that add signals and fix what CSL can't: hereinafter, id. breaks, journal and book pincites. Free and open source.
- Legal research skills
- Plugins for Claude Code and Codex that cite-check law-review drafts against the actual sources, find verified authorities, proofread manuscripts, and write research memos. Free and open source.
- Glassine
- A small, fast, native PDF and Markdown reader for the Mac. Free and open source.
Contact
- epps@wustl.edu
- Papers
- SSRN · Google Scholar
- Elsewhere
- Bluesky · X · WashU Law