Justin Collings

Associate Dean for Faculty and Curriculum and Professor of Law

Professor Justin Collings joined the BYU Law faculty in the fall of 2013. He is a scholar of constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and constitutional history. He is the author of two books, both published by Oxford University Press: Scales of Memory: Constitutional Justice and Historical Evil (2021) and Democracy's Guardians: A History of the German Federal Constitutional Court, 1951-2001 (2015). He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters in various venues, including the Stanford Law Review.

Professor Collings holds a BA from Brigham Young University, where he double-majored in English and Italian with a minor in classical civilization, as well as a JD and PhD in history from Yale University. During the 2012-2013 judicial term, he was a law clerk to the Honorable Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He is fluent in German and Italian and has a reading knowledge of French.

Courses Taught

  • Anglo-American Legal History
  • Comparative Constitutional Law
  • Constitutional History
  • History of the Common Law
  • Property
  • Structures of the Constitution
  • Torts
  • U.S. Constitutional History

Education

  • Ph.D., Yale University, 2013
  • J.D., Yale University, 2010
  • B.A., Brigham Young University, 2006
  • Democracy’s Guardians: A History of the German Federal Constitutional Court, 1951-2001, (Oxford University Press 2015).
  • The Supreme Court and the Memory of Evil, 71 Stanford Law Review (forthcoming, February 2019) .
  • Ernst-Wolfgang Bӧckenfӧrde in the History of the German Constitutional Court, in Understanding Ernst-Wolfgang Bӧckenfӧrde (Tine Stein & Mirjam Kuenker, eds., forthcoming Oxford University Press, 2019).
  • An American Perspective on the German Constitutional Court, in The U.S. Supreme Court and Contemporary Constitutional Law: The Obama Era and its Legacy (Anna-Bettina Kaiser, Niels Petersen & Johannes Sauer, eds., forthcoming Nomos Verlag & Routledge Publishers, 2019).
  • Phasen der politischen Kritik am BVerfG, in Das Bundesverfassungsgericht und die Verfassungsgeschichte der Bundesrepublik. Zur Geschichte der Karlsruher Republik (Christoph Schönberger & Florian Meinel, eds., forthcoming Mohr Siebeck, 2019).
  • Ernst-Wolfgang Bӧckenfӧrde on Constitutional Judging in a Democracy, 19 German Law Journal 161 (2018).
  • What Should Comparative Constitutional History Compare?, 2017 Illinois Law Review 475.
  • Appealing to Congress, 50 U.C. Davis Law Review 463 (2016).
  • Gerhard Leibholz und der Status des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, in Anna-Bettina Kaiser, ed., Der Parteienstaat. Zum Staatsverstӓndnis von Gerhard Leibholz (Nomos-Verlag, 2013).
  • How Adams and Jefferson Read Milton (and Milton Read Them)Milton Quarterly 40 (2006) (with John Tanner).
  • Dieter Grimm, The Constitution of European Democracy , (Oxford University Press, 2017).
  • JUDGE GUIDO CALABRESI, U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT Law clerk. July 2012 to July 2013