Professor Joseph J. Martins joined the faculty of Liberty University School of Law in fall 2011. He became a full professor in 2018 and has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Interim Dean. Before coming to LU, Professor Martins spent five years in public interest law as a constitutional litigator and two years in private practice as a civil litigator.

Professor Martins’s research focuses on constitutional liberties in the context of higher education. He is particularly interested in the free speech rights of faculty and students at public universities. Professor Martins has lectured extensively on a wide variety of constitutional issues as well as the jurisprudential foundations of law and of America’s legal system. Professor Martins’s recent articles have been published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy, Tulsa Law Review, and Regent University Law Review.

Before joining the law faculty, Professor Martins practiced public interest law with the Alliance Defending Freedom and the National Legal Foundation, working on cases related to the freedom of speech, religious liberty, and the sanctity of human life. Several of the cases he litigated yielded published decisions in federal courts around the country. Previously, he practiced for a general civil litigation firm in Asheville, North Carolina. He also clerked for Justice E. Riley Anderson of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Professor Martins received his bachelor’s in history from the University of Virginia; he earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Tennessee College of Law.

At Liberty University School of Law, Professor Martins currently teaches Constitutional Law, Foundations of Law, and Jurisprudence, and he also serves as the director for the Constitutional Litigation Clinic.