William K. Kelley

Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Law

Office Number: 2143 Eck Hall of Law
Telephone: 574.631.8646
Fax: 574.631.4197
Email: William.K.Kelley.24@nd.edu
Staff Assistant: Layla Krog

William K. Kelley teaches constitutional law and administrative law, and focuses on public law issues in his scholarship. He serves as Associate Dean with responsibility for coordinating special projects. During Spring 2008 semester, he will act as Associate Dean for Faculty Research. From 2005-2007, he served in the White House as Deputy Counsel to the President. In that capacity, he was responsible for advising the President of the United States on all legal matters affecting the Executive Branch. He joined the faculty in 1995 after practicing with two major law firms, and serving from 1991-1994 as assistant to the solicitor general at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Professor Kelley began his legal career by serving as law clerk to the Honorable Kenneth W. Starr on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1987-88), as well as for Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia (1988-89). He earned his B.A. from Marquette University in 1984, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1987, where he served as Supreme Court editor of the Harvard Law Review.

In the News

• Featured Faculty on NDLS Home Page: William Kelley on the Nomination of Sotomayor – July 27, 2009
• Featured Faculty on NDLS Home Page: William Kelley – June 2, 2008

LAW60307, Constitutional Law

LAW70305, Constitutional Law II

LAW70315, Administrative Law

Faculty Expertise Areas

• Administrative law
• Constitutional law
• Independent counsel laws

Articles

Avoiding Constitutional Questions As a Three-Branch Problem, 86 Cornell Law Review 831 (2001)

The Primacy of Political Actors in Accommodation of Religion, 22 Univ. of Hawaii L. Rev. 403 (2000)

The Constitutional Dilemma of Litigation Under the Independent Counsel Statute, 83 Minnesota Law Review 1197 (1999)

Inculcating Constitutional Values, 15 Constitutional Commentary 161 (1998)

Book contributions

The Structural Function of the State Action Doctrine in American Constitutional Law, in The Duty to Protect and to Ensure Human Rights (Eckart Klein ed., Univ.
of Potsdam 2000)

Agostini v. Felton, in The Encyclopedia of the American Constitution (Supp. II 1999)

Kiryas Joel, in The Encyclopedia of the American Constitution (Supp. II 1999)