Staff

John Kramer’s strategic media relations work—coupled with IJ’s litigation—is credited with protecting homeowners and small businesses nationwide from eminent domain abuse as well as securing the rights of entrepreneurs to earn an honest living when the government sought to shut them out.  Kramer worked in the court of public opinion to help ensure that First Amendment protections extended to the Internet.  He has applied the media’s bully pulpit to unite foster children with loving adoptive families when state bureaucrats refused to grant adoptions based on the practice of “race matching.” 

Applying market-based principles, he has helped the Institute for Justice personalize, humanize and dramatize its stories of individual liberty to the mainstream media.  Kramer directed the media relations in four landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases: Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of school choice; Swedenburg v. Kelly, in which the Supreme Court vindicated economic liberty by permitting the interstate shipment of wine directly to consumers; Kelo v. City of New London, the eminent domain case which led to a nationwide backlash against this often-abused power of government; and District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Supreme Court struck down D.C.’s ban on hand guns and held that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for private use.

Kramer lectures nationwide on the fundamentals of media relations, including at the Institute’s conferences.  His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, among other news outlets.  In 1997, he earned The Bronze Anvil award for op-ed and editorial placement, the top such award given by the Public Relations Society of America.   In 2000, he earned the International Association of Business Communicators’ “Silver Inkwell” for his media relations work with the Institute for Justice.  In 2001, the billboard campaign, which he directed that is credited with saving 60 buildings and more than 120 businesses in downtown Pittsburgh from the abuse of eminent domain, won the Outdoor Advertising Association of America’s silver medal for Best Media Plan.  In 2004, he earned the Bulldog Reporter’s Silver Prize for his work spotlighting eminent domain abuse, which, among many other features, earned a story by Mike Wallace on the season opener of 60 Minutes. In 2005, he won the Platinum MarCom Creative award for his work fighting eminent domain abuse.  In 2006, Kramer was featured as a “Voice of Authority” on public relations and the law in the nation’s leading collegiate public relations textbook, “The Practice of Public Relations,” by Faser Seitel.

Kramer received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New Mexico State University.  He received his graduate training in journalism at the University of Nevada-Reno, where he taught introductory journalism. In his spare time Kramer enjoys working on his versions of the great American novel and oil painting.