Derek Webb is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law. Professor Webb writes and teaches in the areas of constitutional law, federal courts, civil and criminal procedure, legal history, and American political thought. In the spring of 2025, he was selected by his students as the “Most Outstanding Professor for 1L Students.”

He has published over twenty articles or essays in his field, including (or forthcoming) in the University of Notre Dame Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Law and History Review, the American Journal of Legal History, the Journal of Supreme Court History, Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States, Judicature: The Scholarly Journal for Judges, and the American Journal of Legal Education. And he is currently working on a book manuscript, under contract with Cambridge University Press, entitled “The Spirit of Amity: The Constitution’s Cover Letter and the Original Meaning of Civility.” He was recently selected as a 2025-2026 Fellow at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon to conduct research for the book.

Prior to joining the faculty in the fall of 2024, he was a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School, the Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center, and practiced law at Sidley Austin for five years in Washington, D.C. in its Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Group. During his time in private practice, he argued cases in the federal courts of appeal and was recognized as “One to Watch” for Appellate Practice in the magazine Best Lawyers of Washington, D.C. in 2021, 2022 and 2023. He is the recipient of both the Warren Burger Prize (2012) and the Sandra Day O'Connor Award for Professional Service (2023) from the American Inns of Court.

Before entering private practice, he was a law clerk to Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, a Supreme Court Fellow in the Office of the Counselor to the Chief Justice, an Attorney Advisor to the Rules Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and fellow at Stanford Law School’s Constitutional Law Center.

Professor Webb received his B.A. in philosophy from Yale University, Ph.D. in political theory from the University of Notre Dame, and a J.D. from Georgetown University. At Notre Dame he received the Graduate Student Union Teaching Assistant of the Year Award. And at Georgetown he received six CALI Awards for best papers or exams in six different subjects, and was on the winning team of the Spong Moot Court Tournament at William and Mary Law School, where he received the award for Best Brief for Respondent. He has also held other academic fellowships at Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, where he was the inaugural Wilson Carey McWilliams Fellow in American Politics and Political Theory.

Professor Webb is also active in various civic, professional, and academic societies. In 2025 he was elected to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Supreme Court Historical Society. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and is the 2025-26 Chair of the ALI’s Program Committee, in which role he is currently helping to create a symposium in March 2026 on Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre that will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He is a Senior Research Scholar at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia where he is helping the Center update its online “Interactive Constitution.” And he is also a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a Fellow of Davenport College at Yale University.