Nick Dranias

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Nick Dranias holds the Clarence J. and Katherine P. Duncan Chair for Constitutional Government and is Director of the Joseph and Dorothy Donnelly Moller Center for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute.

Prior to joining the Goldwater Institute, Dranias was an attorney with the Institute for Justice. In law school, Dranias served on the Loyola University Chicago Law Review, competed on Loyola’s National Labor Law Moot Court Team, and received various academic awards. He graduated cum laude from Boston University with a B.A. in Economics and Philosophy.

Dranias has authored numerous articles, including Past the Pall of Orthodoxy, which challenges bar admission restrictions limiting the practice of law to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools, and Consideration as Contract, was published in the Spring 2008 edition of the Texas Review of Law and Politics. He is also the author of The Land Of 10,000 Lakes Drowns Entrepreneurs In Regulations, a study that shows how regulations block the path to the American Dream, and how those barriers can be removed. His first Goldwater Institute work, A New Charter for American Cities: 10 Rights to Restrain Government and Protect Freedom, argues that applying principles of limited government to cities, counties and towns is not only the right thing to do, but a practical necessity. An expanded version of A New Charter including model legislation was recently published by the Phoenix Law School under the title, The Local Liberty Charter: Restoring Grassroots Liberty to Restrain Cities Gone Wild. His next Institute publication, 50 Bright Stars: An Assessment of Each State’s Constitutional Commitment to Limited reveals that 48 out of 50 states offer a stronger guarantee of limited government under their state constitutions than does the federal government under the U.S. Constitution. Reconsidering McDonald v. Chicago: How the 14th Amendment Obliges States to Protect the Fundamental Right to Bear Arms, explains why enforcing the fundamental right to armed self-defense against the states is consistent with principles of federalism. And his latest work, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: A Case for Limiting Campaign Finance Regulations, defends the Supreme Court's recent decision to protect campaign spending by corporations and other associations of individuals as essential to protecting free speech.