Biography
Jon Michaels is a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. Born and raised on Long Island, Jon is a summa cum laude graduate of Williams College, Oxford University (where he studied as a Marshall Scholar), and Yale Law School. After law school, he practiced in the National Security Law sections of two international law firms (WilmerHale and Arnold & Porter) and held two federal clerkships, first for Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since joining the UCLA faculty, Jon’s award-winning academic scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, NYU Law Review, Virginia Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Cornell Law Review. He has published popular press essays in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The American Prospect, Slate, Guardian, Time, CNN.com, Newsweek, the Forward, and the Los Angeles Times.
In October 2024, Atria/One Signal, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, published Jon’s second book, Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy (co-authored with David Noll). In 2017, Harvard University Press published Jon’s first book, Constitutional Coup: Privatization’s Threat to the American Republic. It was excerpted in the Guardian, garnered favorable academic reviews in the Harvard Law Review and Michigan Law Review, and garnered discussion on NPR and in the Washington Post.
An elected member of the American Law Institute, Jon consults with government officials at the federal, state, and local levels, strategizes with legal advocates, business leaders, and directors of nonprofits, lectures across the country, and provides expert analysis for BBC News, NPR, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Vox, AP, Reuters, The Nation, USA Today, The Tavis Smiley Show, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
In addition to his teaching duties, Jon is a faculty affiliate of UCLA’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy and serves on the Advisory Board to UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project.