Kermit Roosevelt III

Kermit Roosevelt III, born on July 14, 1971, in Washington, D.C., is an American legal scholar, author, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He holds the position of David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice and specializes in conflicts of law and constitutional law. Roosevelt is a great-great-grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Roosevelt's family lineage includes his father, also named Kermit Roosevelt, who was a son of Kermit Roosevelt Jr. and a great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt attended St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., where he was recognized as a Presidential Scholar. He subsequently graduated from Harvard University and Yale Law School.

His early legal career included serving as a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Between 2000 and 2002, Roosevelt practiced law at Mayer Brown in Chicago before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2002.

At Penn Law, Roosevelt served as an assistant professor from 2002 to 2007, and as a full professor from 2007 to 2021. In 2021, he was appointed as the David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice. His academic work has been cited multiple times by the Supreme Court of the United States and by lower federal and state courts.

Roosevelt's scholarly publications include "Resolving Renvoi: the Bewitchment of Our Intelligence by Means of Language," published in the University of Notre Dame Law Review in 2005. He has authored several books on legal topics, including "The Myth of Judicial Activism: Making Sense of Supreme Court Decisions" (2006), "Conflict of Laws" (2010), and "The Nation That Never Was" (2022). His nonfiction work has earned recognition in academic and legal circles.

In addition to his scholarly writing, Roosevelt has authored two novels that depict legal settings. His first novel, "In the Shadow of the Law," published in 2006, received generally positive reviews and was named a Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year. Noted legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, writing in The New York Times, endorsed the novel despite critiques of its portrayal of corporate law firms. Roosevelt’s second novel, "Allegiance" (2015), was a finalist for the Harper Lee Prize and received favorable reviews from publications including The Wall Street Journal and The Richmond Times-Dispatch. The novel explores U.S. national security policies during World War II, focusing on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.

Roosevelt has participated in public discourse and activity related to constitutional law. In May 2016, he and Karen Korematsu, daughter of Fred Korematsu, a notable opponent of Japanese-American internment during World War II, appeared together at a National Constitution Center program—the first public forum involving both families. Roosevelt is also a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and serves as a member of the American Law Institute. In November 2014, the American Law Institute announced his selection as the Reporter for the Third Restatement of Conflict of Laws.