Lincoln's Constitution: Professor Harris

Stewart Harris graduated from Princeton University in 1983. In his sophomore year, he was selected for admission to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, a multidisciplinary program spanning the Departments of Politics, History, Sociology and Economics. His independent work at the Wilson School focused primarily upon international security and nuclear weapons policy.

 

Professor Harris graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1986, where he won the Law School’s Edwin R. Keedy moot court championship.

 

He then worked for the federal government in Washington, DC, where he spent four years on Capitol Hill advising the Army Corps of Engineers on civil works projects throughout the continental United States. His duties included drafting congressional testimony for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works.

 

Professor Harris subsequently worked for a large private law firm before establishing his own law practice in Florida. In Florida, he concentrated on environmental, civil rights and First Amendment law, notably obtaining a half-million dollars for a public official who had been libeled by a newspaper.

 

In 1999, Professor Harris began teaching at the University of Florida College of Law. From 2001 to 2016, he taught at the Appalachian School of Law, where he earned the Faculty Scholarship Award and multiple awards for teaching. For the past several years he has also taught Constitutional Law during the summer semester at the University of Tennessee College of Law. In 2016, he started teaching at the Duncan School of Law.

 

In 2011, Professor Harris created a public radio show, Your Weekly Constitutional, which is produced at WETS-FM, the NPR affiliate in Johnson City, Tennessee, and syndicated nationally. YWC is underwritten by the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at Montpelier, the historic home of the Father of the Constitution, James Madison. The show is on Facebook and Twitter, and podcasts are available on iTunes.

 

Stewart and his wife, Priscilla, have two sons: Tom, an honors graduate of Caltech, and Ben, who graduated with highest distinction from the University of Virginia and who is currently a Schwarzman Scholar in Beijing.