Robin D. Barnes, Professor of Law, teaches three Advanced Constitutional Law courses. Professor Barnes graduated with honors from the University of Buffalo Faculty of Law and Jurisprudence in the top 10% of her class, when the law school ranked 15 in the U.S. News & World Report annual survey. She received an LL.M. in Constitutional Theory from the University of Wisconsin, where she began her career as a William H. Hastie Fellow in the 1990s.

Her most widely cited publications appear in the Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Law Reviews. Her work has been cited, criticized and praised in over 330 legal journals.

Barnes most recent book, Outrageous Invasions, Celebrities’ Private Lives, Media and the Law (Oxford University Press, 2010) focuses upon the evolution of press rights, the legal and social consequences of characterizing celebrities as public figures, and how "entertainment news" deflects attention way from rights of privacy, and broader issues of democratic order in the United States and European Union.

Barnes’s casebook, The Nature and Scope of Individual Rights: Emerging Debates in Constitutional Law (2007), focuses upon individual rights in the areas of substantive due process, privacy, and the role of lawyers in shaping the fundamental rights debate. The book has been favorably reviewed by well-respected scholars:

The materials are well-chosen and obviously provocative. The issues are central to our conception of self, family and society, and the concepts of right and wrong that animate the relationships. So, the only remaining question is: Do you have the courage to teach this course?

Matthew L. Spitzer, Hayden W. Head Regents Chair for Faculty Excellence, University of Texas School of Law

Given this book’s enterprise of exploring the most atomistic of individual rights under the Constitution, the subject areas are shown to have a logical nexus that offers new insights into the interrelationship of various individual rights.

Terry Smith, Distinguished Research Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law

Barnes is a member of the International Association of Law Schools, European Society of International Law, and Law & Society. Barnes speaks nationally and internationally on matters related to democracy, free speech, academic freedom, and privacy as a human right.