Ilan Wurman

Ilan Wurman

  • Professor of Law
  • Julius E. Davis Professor of Law
420 Mondale Hall

Degrees

  • Claremont McKenna College, B.A.
  • Stanford, J.D.

Expertise

  • Administrative Law
  • Constitutional Law
  • Fourteenth Amendment
  • Presidential Power

Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law. He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals. 

Professor Wurman is the author of a casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2024). He is also the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). His next book, The Constitution of 1789: An Introduction, is also forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.

Constitutional Law: Federalism and Separation of Powers


Advanced Administrative Law


Recent Books on the Constitution


Books

The Constitution of 1789: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2026)
Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press, 1st ed., 2021; 2d ed., 2024)
The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Journal Articles

Importance and Interpretive Questions, 110 Virginia Law Review 909 (2024)
OT '22 and the Path of Administrative Law, 71 Drake Law Review 435 (2024)
The Original Presidency: A Conception of Administrative Control, 16 Journal of Legal Analysis 26 (2024)
Alexander Hamilton on Executive Authority, 63 American Journal of Legal History 251 (2023)
Reconstructing Reconstruction-Era Rights, 109 Virginia Law Review 885 (2023)
Reversing Incorporation, 99 Notre Dame Law Review 265 (2023)
Constitutional Laboratories: Some Reflections on COVID-19 Litigation in Arizona, 15 NYU Journal of Law & Liberty 792 (2022)
Nonexclusive Functions and Separation of Powers Law, 107 Minnesota Law Review 735 (2022)
Subsidiarity and Fundamental Rights Protection in the United States, III Central European Journal of Comparative Law 241 (2022)
An Introduction to Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy Per Curiam (Nov. 9, 2021)
Nondelegation at the Founding, 130 Yale Law Journal 1490 (2021)
In Search of Prerogative, 70 Duke Law Journal 93 (2020)
The Origins of Substantive Due Process, 87 University of Chicago Law Review 815 (2020)
The Removal Power: A Critical Guide, 2020 Cato Supreme Review 157 (2020)
The Specification Power, 168 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 689 (2020)
As-Applied Nondelegation, 96 Texas Law Review 975 (2018)
Constitutional Administration, 69 Stanford Law Review 359 (2017)
Law Historians’ Fallacies, 91 North Dakota Law Review 161 (2015)
How to Permit Your Mammoth: Some Legal Implications of “De-Extinction,” 33 Stanford Journal of Environmental Law 3 (2014)
(with
Norman F. Carlin
and
Tamara Zakim
)
Qualified Immunity and Statutory Interpretation, 37 Seattle University Law Review 939 (2014)
The Original Understanding of Constitutional Legitimacy, 2014 Brigham Young University Law Review 819 (2014)
Drug Testing Welfare Recipients as a Constitutional Condition, 65 Stanford Law Review 1153 (2013) (note)

Book Reviews

Book Review, 12 American Political Thought 466 (2023) (reviewing Paul M. Rego, Lyman Trumbell and the Second Founding of America (University Press of Kansas, 2022))
Whose Substantive Due Process?, Balkinization (Oct. 21, 2022) (reviewing James E. Fleming, Constructing Basic Liberties: A Defense of Substantive Due Process (University of Chicago Press, 2022))
From Comity to Equality, Law & Liberty (Dec. 14, 2021) (reviewing Randy E. Barnett & Evan D. Bernick, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021))

Other Publications

A Missing Distinction in Loper, Notice & Comment, Yale Journal on Regulation (July 27, 2023)
Reversing the Legacy of Slaughter-House, Law & Liberty (Apr. 3, 2023)
COVID-19 and the Rational Basis Test, 67 Wayne Law Review 57 (2021)
What Is Originalism? Debunking the Myths, The Conversation (Oct. 24, 2020)
Stare Decisis in an Originalist Theory of Law, Law & Liberty (Sept. 9, 2020)
What Originalism Conserves, Law & Liberty (July 27, 2020)
Administrative Law and the DACA Decision, Newsweek (June 20, 2020)
No Nondelegation at the Founding? Not So Fast, Notice & Comment, Yale Journal on Regulation (Jan. 5, 2020)
Originalism and Sovereign Immunity, Law & Liberty (May 24, 2019)
The Legal U-Turn, Law & Liberty (Apr. 9, 2018)
The Untold Story of Lucia v. SEC: The Constitutionality of Agency Adjudications, Notice & Comment, Yale Journal on Regulation (Apr. 6, 2018)
Toward Constitutional Administration, National Affairs (Spr. 2016)
A Modest Proposal for Reforming the Administrative State, Law & Liberty (Feb. 2, 2016)
The Founders’ Originalism, National Affairs (Spr. 2014)