Rate My Professor Anthony Gaughan

Anthony Gaughan is Associate Dean, Professor of Law, and Kern Family Chair in Law at Drake University Law School. He teaches Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Election Law, Evidence, and Legal & Constitutional History. Gaughan has served as a visiting professor at the University of Iowa College of Law, the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and the University of Nebraska College of Law. In August 2024, he was appointed by the Iowa Supreme Court to the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure Review Task Force. He is a Senior Fellow in the Election Law Program at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Prior to academia, Gaughan practiced as a litigator with a large Wisconsin law firm and served as a U.S. Navy officer and Iraq veteran. His academic background includes a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. from Louisiana State University, and a B.A. in History from the University of Minnesota.

Gaughan's scholarship centers on election law, civil procedure, constitutional law, and legal history. He authored the peer-reviewed book The Last Battle of the Civil War: United States versus Lee, 1861-1883 (Louisiana State University Press, 2011), analyzing the Supreme Court's Arlington National Cemetery decision. His articles appear in leading journals, including Cyclical Misalignment: A History of Campaign Finance Law, 86 Ohio State Law Journal (2025); The Unsettled State of Corporate General Personal Jurisdiction, 103 Nebraska Law Review 131 (2024); Voting in Colonial and Revolutionary America, in The Oxford Handbook of American Election Law (Oxford University Press, 2024); Redistricting in the Political Thicket: The Ghosts of Colegrove v. Green, 111 Kentucky Law Journal 589 (2023); and The Influence of Partisanship on Supreme Court Election Law Rulings, 36 Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 553 (2022). Gaughan has been honored with the Leland Forrest Outstanding Professor of the Year award from Drake Law School students four times (2015, 2016, 2021, 2025), the Stevens Faculty Scholar of the Year (2023), and military commendations including the Defense Meritorious Service Medal and Iraq Campaign Medal. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute.