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Margot Cleveland

Margot Cleveland

Of Counsel


Margot joins the NCLA’s mission to safeguard the U.S. Constitution from the Administrative State’s overreach from a diverse professional background. After graduating from the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor—Margot practiced law in a large Chicago law firm in the commercial litigation department. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, obtaining a broad expertise in federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.

Margot is also a former full-time faculty member of the University of Notre Dame, where she taught law to undergraduate and graduate students for more than a decade, being honored in 1998 with the University-wide Frank O’Malley Undergraduate Teaching Award for her outstanding impact on undergraduate education and her exceptional service to students.

After retiring from the U.S. Courts, Margot launched a new career as an investigative journalist and legal analyst. She currently serves as the Senior Legal Correspondent to The Federalist. Margot’s work has also been published in The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She also appears regularly as a guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on FoxNews, Fox Business, and Newsmax.

Not licensed in Virginia; admitted to practice in Michigan, and select federal jurisdictions; inactive in Illinois.

Dying Alone

By: Margot Cleveland March 26, 2025
COVID-19 | FIve Years Page
The government’s authoritative response to Covid proved particularly devastating for Americans nearing the end of their lives and those whose loved ones were dying or died during the Covid years. As the authors of The Legal and Ethical Dimensions of Hospital Visitation Bans in the COVID-19 Era noted, “[t]he scope and intensity of these visitation…
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Courts Aren’t Trampling Trump, They’re Trampling the Voters

By: Margot Cleveland February 24, 2025
“They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in the way.” President Trump, while varying the formulation, regularly jibes that sentiment when speaking to Americans. Mr. Trump, moreover, has never been more correct in his assessment than now. The “they,” however, is no longer Democrats, the Deep State, or even…
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The Supreme Court Must Quit Qualified Immunity

By: Margot Cleveland December 18, 2023
Blogs
Justices Sotomayor and Thomas agree. Professors Neal Katyal and Philip Hamburger agree. And the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) agree. The United States Supreme Court should reconsider its qualified immunity jurisprudence. And that is precisely what the NCLA has asked the Supreme Court to do in its petition for certiorari…
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