Vincent C. Immel Professor of Law

Joel Goldstein is a highly respected scholar of the Presidency, Vice Presidency and Constitutional Law, having written widely in all three areas.

Professor Goldstein is perhaps best known for his work on the vice presidency. His doctoral dissertation grew into his first book, The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution (Princeton University Press 1982). He has written widely on the vice presidency, consulted on vice presidential selection and is frequently interviewed on the subject. He is currently writing a new book on the Vice Presidency as it has developed the last 30 years. He is also working on studies of Senator Edmund S. Muskie and Justice Louis Brandeis.

Over the years, Professor Goldstein has written books as well as numerous chapters and articles on the executive branch, constitutional law and admiralty law for prestigious legal journals. He has co-authored Constitutional Law, (5th ed. 2008) and Understanding Constitutional Law (3d ed. 2005) with Norman Redlich and John Attanasio, and co-authored Admiralty: Cases and Materials (2005) with Robert Jarvis, David Bederman and Steven Swanson. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution and the Encyclopedia of the American Presidency and other works. In 2003, he organized “Brown v. Board of Education: 50 Years Later,” a comprehensive conference examining the impact of the “separate but equal” decision on the American education system.

Professor Goldstein received a doctorate in political science at Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from Harvard Law School, where he was a note editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school he was a law clerk for Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, and practiced admiralty law for 12 years at Goldstein and Price in St. Louis.

While he found practice satisfying, Professor Goldstein says he also found himself drawn to teaching and writing. He joined the School of Law in 1994, was associate dean of faculty from 2001-2004 and was awarded the Vincent C. Immel Professorship in 2005. His most satisfying teaching experience came in the seminar on the Presidency and the Constitution, which he taught with the late Thomas F. Eagleton.