Todd F. Gaziano

Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research and Director, Center for the Separation of Powers

Pacific Legal Foundation

Todd Gaziano is Pacific Legal Foundation’s Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and director of its Center for the Separation of Powers. His legal career includes positions in all three branches of the federal government, the private sector, and as a think tank scholar and leader in the freedom-based public interest legal movement.

His public law service includes work as a law clerk for U.S. Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, in the U.S. DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, and as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also served a six-year term as Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008 – 2014).

With more than 20 years of experience in the non-profit liberty movement, including as founding director of The Heritage Foundation’s Legal Center, Todd continues to publish scholarly papers and op-eds, testify before Congress, and comment in other public settings on legal reform topics. He has a special interest in the constitutional limits of government, especially structural provisions like federalism and the separation of powers, that protect individual liberty.

In early 2018, Todd helped launch PLF’s Center for the Separation of Powers, which leads in the development and promotion of solutions to end the unconstitutional regulatory state. The Center has helped PLF formulate several waves of innovative litigation to restore the constitutional separation of powers, and it works with allies to develop a blueprint of action to eliminate unconstitutional doctrines and practices that undermine individual liberty.