Before coming to MSU College of Law in 2000, Professor Brian Kalt was a law clerk for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and an associate at the Washington D.C. office of Sidley Austin.
His research focuses on structural constitutional law, especially provisions concerning the presidency (elections, impeachment, pardons, and the 25th Amendment), and on juries.
He has appeared numerous times on national television, and has written for the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, among many other publications. His law-review article on the impeachment of ex-presidents was cited by both sides’ lawyers during the second impeachment of President Trump.
In addition to teaching at MSU, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Alabama and the University of Ottawa, and a visiting lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania.
Professor Kalt is admitted to the State Bar of Michigan and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the Sixth Circuit.
Download Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
J.D. Yale Law School
A.B. University of Michigan
Law Faculty Repository »
Books
Unable: The Law, Politics, and Limits of Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2019).
Constitutional Cliffhangers: A Legal Guide for Presidents and Their Enemies (Yale University Press 2012).
Sixties Sandstorm: The Fight over Establishment of a Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (Michigan State University Press 2001).
Law Review Publications
Presidential Impeachment and Removal: From the Two-Party System to the Two-Reality System, 27 George Mason Law Review 1 (2019).
Section Four of the Twenty-fifth Amendment: Easy Cases and Tough Calls, 10 ConLawNOW 153 (2019) (symposium piece), https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/conlawnow/vol10/iss1/12/.
Of Death and Deadlocks: Section 4 of the Twentieth Amendment, 54 Harvard Journal on Legislation 101 (2017).
Unconstitutional But Entrenched: Putting UOCAVA and Voting Rights for Permanent Expatriates on a Sound Constitutional Footing, 81 Brooklyn Law Review 441 (2016).
Winning Recounts: Essential Mathematical and Statistical Insights for Election Lawyers, 30 Journal of Law & Politics 141 (2014).
The Application of the Disqualification Clause to Congress: A Response to Benjamin Cassady, “You’ve Got Your Crook, I’ve Got Mine”: Why the Disqualification Clause Doesn’t (Always) Disqualify, 33 Quinnipiac Law Review 7 (2014).
The Ninth Amendment in Congress, 40 Pepperdine Law Review 75 (2012).
Explaining, Defending, and Exporting the Socratic Method, 27 Soongsil Law Review 309 (2012) (partially translated into Korean).
Politics and the Federal Appointments Process, 5 Harvard Law & Policy Review (Online), Apr. 5, 2011, http://hlpronline.com/2011/04/politics-and-the-federal-appointments-process/.
Tabloid Constitutionalism: How a Bill Doesn't Become a Law, 96 Georgetown Law Journal 1971 (2008).
Keeping Recess Appointments in Their Place, 101 Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy 88 (2007), http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/colloquy/2007/3/; and Keeping Tillman Adjournments in Their Place: A Rejoinder to Seth Barrett Tillman, 101 Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy 108 (2007), http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/colloquy/2007/6/.
Crossing Eight Mile: Juries of the Vicinage and County-Line Criminal Buffer Statutes, 80 Washington Law Review 271 (2005).
The Perfect Crime, 93 Georgetown Law Journal 675 (2005).
Three Levels of Stare Decisis: Distinguishing Common-Law, Constitutional, and Statutory Cases, 8 Texas Review of Law & Politics 277 (2004).
The Exclusion of Felons from Jury Service, 53 American University Law Review 65 (2003).
“American Perspective,” in MSU–DCL Tri-Panel on the Election Process: A Discussion of the 2000 Elections in The United States, Canada, and Mexico, 10 Michigan State University Detroit College of Law Journal of International Law 109 (2001).
The Constitutional Case for the Impeachability of Former Federal Officials: An Analysis of the Law, History, and Practice of Late Impeachment, 6 Texas Review of Law & Politics 13 (2001).
The People’s Forest and Levy’s Trees: Popular Sovereignty and the Origins of the Bill of Rights, 17 Constitutional Commentary 119 (2000).
Death, Ethics, and the State, 23 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 487 (2000).
Wade H. McCree, Jr., and the Office of the Solicitor General, 1977–1981, 1998 Detroit College of Law at Michigan State University Law Review 703.
The Presidential Privilege Against Prosecution, 2 Nexus 11 (1997) (with Akhil Reed Amar).
Note, Pardon Me?: The Constitutional Case Against Presidential Self-Pardons, 106 Yale Law Journal 779 (1996).
Administrative Law
Formerly DCL 300)
This course examines the place of administrative agencies in American government, and surveys the legal rules and principles governing agency regulation, adjudication, investigation, and enforcement; agency structure; and judicial review of agency action. Students who have taken Administrative Law: Food Safety and Labeling (810K) may not take this course
Torts I
(Formerly DCl 141)
The study of the protection that the law affords against interference by others with one's person, property or intangible interest. It is broadly divisible into three areas of liability: intentional interference, negligence and strict liability. Specific tort actions and defenses are analyzed. Each is examined in the context of underlying social and economic factors that provide the framework in which law develops and social conflict is managed.
Torts II
This course surveys specialized torts such as nuisance, defamation, privacy, civil rights, misuse of legal procedure, misrepresentation, interference with advantageous relationships, torts in the age of statutes, and alternative compensation systems.
