Garrett Jones

Garrett Jones is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton School. Jones is a scholar of American political thought and constitutionalism, specializing in understandings of presidential power in debates during ratification and the early republic. Jones previously taught at the Thomas Jefferson Center at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His scholarship is published in Political Research Quarterly and American Political Thought.

Current Project

Jones is currently completing a book manuscript entitled, Outside but Not Against the Law: The Implied Powers Presidency. This project investigates the relationship of executive prerogative to the American Constitution. The substantive chapters on Montesquieu, William Blackstone, John Marshall, and case studies in American constitutional development analyze conceptions of executive emergency powers with respect to the separation of powers. Significantly, these meaningfully limited conceptions of executive discretion stand in contrast to the influential account of prerogative from John Locke that continues to shape contemporary scholarly understandings of presidential power.

Education

• Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2025
• M.A. in Political Theory, University of Essex, 2020
• B.A. in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy, James Madison College at Michigan State University, 2017

Publications - Articles

The Limits of Executive Discretion in John Marshall’s Constitutionalism, Sage Journals. 2026.

Judith Shklar’s Constitutional Politics in States of Emergency: The Function of the Energetic Executive in the Face of Passive Injustice, The University of Chicago Press Journals. 2025.