Jeff Rowes serves as a staff attorney at the Institute for Justice. His practice focuses on private property rights, free speech, and economic liberty.

Jeff currently represents the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing and mentoring program for at-risk youth in National City, California near San Diego. National City, which declared the gym and hundreds of other properties “blighted,” approved a plan to seize the gym and transfer its land to a private developer so he can build luxury condos for the wealthy. He also represents the elderly and working-class families of the beachfront MTOTSA neighborhood in Long Branch, N.J. who are facing condemnation for the same reason.

In his First Amendment practice, Jeff successfully represented Chris Pagan before the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Pagan’s First Amendment suit against Glendale, Ohio for banning automobile "for sale" signs from parked cars. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Glendale's request to review this decision.

With respect to economic liberty, Jeff represents Maryland entrepreneurs who want to own funeral homes, a Massachusetts entrepreneur who is trying to open an amphibious vehicle sightseeing company, and a non-denominational summer camp in Pennsylvania trying to secure access to a river for whitewater rafting.

Jeff regularly publishes opinion pieces on constitutional law, including a recent essay in Legal Times about the state of property law in America following the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London.

Jeff graduated with honors from Harvard Law School in 2002 where he was extensively involved in law and economics. He also holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Chicago in law and philosophy.

Before coming to the Institute, Jeff clerked for Judge Will Garwood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Chief Judge Patricia Fawsett of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.