Mark R. Killenbeck

Wylie H. Davis Distinguished Professor of Law

A.B., J.D., Ph.D.

Assistant for Prof. Killenbeck

Professor Mark Killenbeck has been at the School of Law since 1988. He teaches Constitutional Law, The First Amendment, American Legal History, and Criminal Law.

Professor Killenbeck earned his undergraduate degree from Boston College, majoring in English literature, a subject he subsequently taught at the University of Kansas. He earned both his J.D. and Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska, where he spent 13 years in the University’s Central Administration, ultimately serving as Chief of Staff for the system President.

Professor Killenbeck is the author of numerous books, chapters, articles, and papers, with a special focus on federalism, American constitutional history, and affirmative action and diversity. His articles have appeared in a number of major national law journals, including the Supreme Court Review, California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Hastings Law Journal.

Professor Killenbeck's most recent book, M'Culloch v. Maryland: Securing a Nation, was published in 2006 by the University Press of Kansas. His assessment of the Supreme Court's 2003 affirmative action decisions, Affirmative Action and Diversity: The Beginning of the End? Or the End of the Beginning?, was published in 2004 by the Educational Testing Service in their Policy Information Perspective series. He has also contributed chapters to a number of works, the most recent of which is “Affirmative Action and the Courts: From Plessy to Brown to Grutter, And Back?,” which appeared in Social Consciousness in Legal Decision Making: Psychological Perspectives  (Springer Publishing Company, June 2007).

Professor Killenbeck is an elected member of the American Law Institute and was the first individual in the history of the Law School to be elected to membership while serving on the faculty. He was also recently designated as a contributing editor for the publication Historically Speaking, for which will write periodically on the Supreme Court and constitutional history.  The first of these essays, “Context and Content: The Enduring Importance of M’Culloch v. Maryland,” appeared in the July/August 2007 issue.

In Print

M'Culloch v. Maryland: Securing a Nation
Hardcover | Trade Paper

The Tenth Amendment and State Sovereignty: Constitutional History and Contemporary Issues
Hardcover | Trade Paper

"The New Commerce Clause," an entry in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Kermit Hall and James Ely, Eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 2005

Supreme Court Update 2007: The Roberts Court? Audio Conference

In The News

Law Professor Publishes Article, Assumes Editorial Position
November 08, 2007