Joshua Michael Blackman is an American lawyer who is employed as an associate professor of law at the South Texas College of Law where he focuses on constitutional law and the intersection of law and technology. He has authored one book and co-authored two others.

Life and career

Blackman attended

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

, and graduated in 2005 with a BS in Information Sciences and Technology. He then attended George Mason Law School, (now the

Antonin Scalia Law School The Antonin Scalia Law School is the law school of George Mason University, Virginia's largest public research university. It is located in Arlington, Virginia, roughly west of Washington, D.C., and east-northeast of George Mason University's ...

), graduating with a JD in 2009. After finishing law school, Blackman clerked for judge Kim R. Gibson in

Johnstown, Pennsylvania Johnstown is the largest city in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 18,411 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located east of Pittsburgh, it is the principal city of the Metropolitan statistical area ...

, and subsequently for Judge Danny Julian Boggs. In 2009 he launched (via his nonprofit, the Harlan Institute)

FantasySCOTUS FantasySCOTUS is an online fantasy league created by Josh Blackman. FantasySCOTUS was subsequently acquired by LexPredict, LLC. Those participating in the league predict how each member of the United States Supreme Court will rule on any given c ...

, a

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

prediction market Prediction markets, also known as betting markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures or event derivatives, are open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives. They are exchange-traded mar ...

. In 2010, his personal blog was identified as a top 100 law blog by the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...

, which took note of his claim to have co-developed an algorithm to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases. Blackman joined the South Texas College of Law in 2012, where he teaches property, constitutional law, and legal theory. He has appeared as a speaker for the

Federalist Society The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (FedSoc) is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative and Libertarianism in the United States, libertarian legal organization that advocates for a Textualism, textualist an ...

, and is an adjunct scholar at the

Cato Institute The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch ...

. Blackman is listed as a contributor to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 policy document.

Court cases

In 2015, Blackman represented

Defense Distributed Defense Distributed is an online, open-source hardware and software organization that develops digital schematics of firearms in CAD files, or "wiki weapons", that may be downloaded from the Internet and used in 3D printing or CNC, CNC milling a ...

in their First Amendment challenge to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations ban on 3D printed gun files. The lawsuit was settled in 2018.

CUNY incident

On March 29, 2018, at a

event hosted by CUNY Law School, Blackman's presentation was disrupted by campus protesters. Blackman later shared a video of the incident, in which he was heckled and shouted down for approximately ten minutes before the protestors left the room. Some of the protestors objected to Blackman's support for President Trump's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, although Blackman explained that he would support a DACA law that was passed by Congress.

Books

* Blackman, Josh, and Randy Barnett. ''Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare''. PublicAffairs, 2013. * Blackman, Josh. ''Unraveled: Obamacare, Religious Liberty, and Executive Power''.

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, 2016. * Barnett, Randy E., and Josh Blackman. An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know.

Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer N.V. is a Dutch information services company. The company serves legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and healthcare markets. Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a merger bet ...

, 2020.

References

External links

* *
Posts by Blackman
on '' The Volokh Conspiracy blog'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Blackman, Josh Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American lawyers 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American legal scholars American legal writers American libertarians American male bloggers American bloggers American male non-fiction writers American political writers Cato Institute people Pennsylvania State University alumni