Faculty Directory

Kent Greenfield

Professor

Dean's Distinguished Scholar

Profile

An internationally-recognized scholar of constitutional law and corporate governance, Kent Greenfield is a professor and the Dean’s Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School. He has authored three trade books, including Corporations are People Too (And They Should Act Like It) for Yale University Press. He is also the author of two constitutional law e-casebooks and the principal editor of the two Supreme Court volumes of Moore’s Federal Practice (LexisNexis).

Greenfield is a frequent public commentator on broadcast and cable news programs, having appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, and Fox. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Slate, SCOTUSBlog, Boston Globe, American Prospect, Salon, and Nation. He has also published over four dozen scholarly articles in leading legal journals including the Yale Law Journal and Virginia Law Review.

Greenfield is an active participant in litigation matters pertaining to civil rights and corporate accountability. He was the founder and president of the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, the named plaintiff in a 2006 Supreme Court case that challenged the Pentagon’s anti-gay policies. He was instrumental in developing the theory of the cases brought against Unocal Corporation and Hershey Corporations for alleged human rights violations in Burma and West Africa. Additionally, he has authored several amicus briefs in Supreme Court matters, including in the cases of Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and 303 Creative v Elenis, arguing that the Supreme Court should not extend religious freedom rights to for-profit corporations.

Having lectured at nearly 140 institutions in 45 different states and 11 countries, Greenfield has received four teaching awards while at Boston College. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School, he clerked for Justice David H. Souter of the United States Supreme Court and practiced at Covington & Burling in Washington, DC.  

 

RECENT MEDIA & APPEARANCES