Brian G. Slocum

Brian G. Slocum joined the FSU College of Law faculty in 2023. Professor Slocum teaches Contracts, Administrative Law, Legislation & Regulation, and Language and Legal Interpretation. Professor Slocum’s research is interdisciplinary, applying knowledge from linguistics and philosophy of language to address issues of legal interpretation, both empirically and normatively. Professor Slocum has served as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and University of California, Davis School of Law. Professor Slocum has won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship. In 2024, Professor Slocum was named one of the ten most cited Legislation (including Statutory Interpretation & Legislative Process) Law Faculty in the United States, 2019-2023 (as recognized on Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports blog).

Professor Slocum is the coauthor of “Twenty-First Century Textualism” (Yale University Press, forthcoming) with William N. Eskridge Jr. and Kevin Tobia. Professor Slocum is also the author of “Ordinary Meaning: A Theory of the Most Fundamental Principle of Legal Interpretation" (University of Chicago Press 2015), the editor of "Inference, Intention and 'Ordinary Meaning': What jurists can learn about legal interpretation from linguistics and philosophy" (University of Chicago Press 2017), and a co-editor of “Justice Scalia: Rhetoric and the Rule of Law” (University of Chicago Press 2019). Professor Slocum has published numerous articles in top law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, New York University Law Review, Southern California Law Review, University of Michigan Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law. Prior to entering academia, Professor Slocum worked at the U.S. Department of Justice and clerked for the Honorable Frank Magill, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.