Donate
Sign Up

NCLA Site Search

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.

Will Politics and Practicality Trump Precedent & Separation of Powers in Nationwide Injunction Case?

By: Margot Cleveland May 19, 2025
Blogs
Prior to last Thursday’s Supreme Court oral argument in the consolidated birthright citizenship cases, most legal prognosticators proclaimed the high court would finally put an end to nationwide injunctions. Afterall, a majority of the justices in concurrences or dissents had criticized the granting of—by single district court judges—injunctions that applied on a nationwide basis and…
Read

The constitution, the courts, and nationwide injunctions

By: Margot Cleveland May 12, 2025
The Supreme Court will consider the propriety of nationwide injunctions next week in three consolidated cases involving challenges to President Donald Trump’s executive orders purporting to end birthright citizenship. The flurry of nationwide injunctions since Trump’s re-election creates the impression that the issue before the high court is a political one. It is not. Rather,…
Read

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…
Read
+