Robert F. Williams

Distinguished Professor of Law and Director, Center for State Constitutional Studies

Rutgers University of School of Law

Robert F. Williams is an expert in state constitutional law and is the Director of the Center for State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers. He’s authored numerous articles and books, participated in a wide range of litigation and lectured to state judges and lawyers on subjects involving state constitutional law.

Professor Williams earned his B.A. cum laude in 1967 at Florida State University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi.  He earned his J.D. with honors in 1969 at the University of Florida School of Law, where he was executive editor of the law review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Professor Williams also earned his LL.M. in 1971 at New York University School of Law, where he was a Ford Foundation Urban Law Fellow. In addition, he has been a Chamberlain Fellow at Columbia University Law School, where he earned an LL.M. in 1980. He is admitted to the bars of Florida, New Jersey and the United States Supreme Court. He has been the legislative advocacy director and executive director of Florida Legal Services, Inc.; an International Legal Center Fellow in Kabul, Afghanistan; and a reporter for the Florida Law Revision Council’s Landlord-Tenant Law Project. In addition, he served as a legislative assistant to Florida Senator D. Robert Graham; a staff attorney with Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc.; and a law clerk to Chief Judge T. Frank Hobson of the Florida Second District Court of Appeals. His books include The Law of American State Constitutions (2009); The New Jersey State Constitution (2d Ed. 2012) and State Constitutional Law, Cases and Materials (Fourth Edition, 2006). He is the coauthor, with Hetzel and Libonati, of Legislative Law and Statutory Interpretation:  Cases and Materials(Fourth Ed. 2008).  Among his articles are:  “Statutes as Sources of Law beyond Their Terms in Common Law Cases” (George Washington Law Review), “State Constitutional Law Processes” (William and Mary Law Review), “In the Supreme Court’s Shadow:  Legitimacy of State Rejection of Supreme Court Reasoning and Result” (South Carolina Law Review), “Equality Guarantees in State Constitutional Law” (Texas Law Review), “The State Constitutions of the Founding Decade:  Pennsylvania’s Radical 1776 Constitution and its Influence on American Constitutionalism” (Temple Law Review), and “In the Glare of the Supreme Court:  Continuing Methodology and Legitimacy Problems in Independent State Constitutional Rights Adjudication” (Notre Dame Law Review).