Speaker Bios

John Q. Barrett

John Q. Barrett, a Professor of Law, has been a member of the St. John's University faculty since 1995. Professor Barrett is a graduate of Georgetown University (A.B. 1983) and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1986). From 1986-88, he was a law clerk to Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

Professor Barrett is the Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, NY. He currently is working on a biography of Justice Jackson that will include the first inside account of his year (1945-46) away from the Court as the chief American prosecutor of the principal surviving Nazi leaders at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.

The Jackson List: Professor Barrett sends out periodic emails with information that relates to Robert H. Jackson. To join the list (where recipient identities and emails remain private), send a note to barrettj@stjohns.edu.

Before joining the St. John's faculty, Barrett was Counselor to U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich, who supervised a staff of almost 400 attorneys, criminal investigative agents, auditors and inspectors and had jurisdiction over misconduct and management issues involving DOJ's components and its more than 100,000 employees worldwide.

From 1988-1993, Barrett was Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh (Iran/Contra), where he was responsible for federal grand jury investigations and related litigation and participated in the criminal prosecutions of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger.

Professor Barrett's edited version of That Man: An Insider's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the late Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson's previously unknown memoir of FDR and the New Deal, is now available in paperback from Oxford University Press, in bookstores nationwide and on line.

That Man, a Main Selection of the Book of the Month Club and the History Book Club and a Choice Outstanding Academic title for 2005, has been reviewed prominently in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic and Legal Times, among other publications. Professor Barrett has discussed That Man in many major media, including National Public Radio's "All Things Considered". He also speaks regularly about That Man, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Supreme Court and Justice Jackson in venues throughout the country.