Distinguished Visitor Program

About the Program

 Pursuant to its historic purpose of promoting excellence in legal scholarship, The Order of the Coif sponsors a program that enables chapters to bring distinguished members of the legal profession to their campuses. Each year the Executive Committee will invite one or more distinguished judges, academics, or practitioners to visit several law schools that have established Coif chapters. The Distinguished Visitor spends two days at each of the institutions he or she visits, participating in classroom lectures and seminars, meeting informally with faculty and student groups, and giving one address open to the entire academic community, the local professional community, and alumni, including the chapter’s Coif membership. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by fostering an exchange of ideas with individuals whose experiences and ideas may be expected to stimulate discussion about important issues confronting the legal profession.

The Distinguished Visitor Program replaced the Distinguished Lecture Series in 2004.

Applications to host the 2026 Coif Distinguished Visitor are closed.

2026 Coif Distinguished Visitor

Josh Chafetz

Josh Chafetz is the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Law and Politics at Georgetown Law. He received his B.A. from Yale University, his doctorate in Politics from Oxford (where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar), and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before coming to Georgetown, he spent twelve years on the faculty at Cornell Law School.

His research interests include structural constitutional law, American and British constitutional history, legislation and legislative procedure, American political development, and the intersection of law and politics. His second book, Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers, was published by Yale University Press in 2017. He is also the author of Democracy’s Privileged Few: Legislative Privilege and Democratic Norms in the British and American Constitutions (Yale University Press, 2007) and is a co-editor (along with William N. Eskridge Jr. and James Brudney) of the leading casebook in Legislation, Cases and Materials on Legislation and Regulation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy, published by West.

His scholarship has been published in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Notre Dame Law Review, and Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, among others. He has also written for a number of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Slate, and The New Republic. He has served on both the American Political Science Association Presidential Task Force on Congressional Reform and the Princeton University Initiative on Restoring the Constitutional Powers of Congress.

 Past Distinguished Visitors

2025 Stephen I. Vladeck, Georgetown University Law Center
2024 Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Harvard Law School
2023 Oona Hathaway, Yale Law School
2022 Melissa Murray, NYU School of Law
2021-2020 Michael J. Gerhardt, University of North Carolina
2019 James Forman, Jr., Yale Law School
2018 Abbe R. Gluck, Yale Law School
2017 Amanda L. Tyler, U.C. Berkeley School of Law
2016 Eugene R. Fidell, Yale Law School
2015 Tracey L. Meares, Yale Law School
2014 Neal Katyal, Georgetown University Law School
2013 Kenji Yoshino, New York University School of Law
2012 Heather Gerken, Yale Law School
2011 Saul Levmore, University of Chicago Law School
2010 Michael J. Klarman, Harvard Law School
2009 Jane Ginsburg, Columbia Law School
2008 David B. Wilkins, Harvard Law School
2007 Jesse H. Choper, U.C. Berkeley School of Law
2006 Pamela S. Karlan, Stanford Law School
2005 John C. Coffee, Columbia Law School
2004 Judge Patricia Wald