Allen Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall is a Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and Senior Advisor for the Free Enterprise Initiative at The Heritage Foundation. He develops strategy and leads outreach and coalitions efforts on ESG and capital markets. Previously, he was Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University, where he directed the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy.

His segment, “Word to the Wise,” appears on Troy Public Radio (WTSU 89.9, WRWA 88.7, WTJB 91.7). He writes a weekly column for 1819 News, Alabama’s bold and innovative conservative news outlet. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey appointed him to the 2025-26 State Textbook Committee of the Alabama Department of Education.

Mendenhall has taught in university English departments, business schools, a humanities department, a law school, a Japanese private school (juku), and a penitentiary. Before joining Troy University, he served as Associate Dean and Founding Executive Director of the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law & Liberty at Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law in Montgomery, Alabama. He edited Southern Literary Review for over a decade and was a visiting scholar and trustee at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), an adjunct legal associate at the Cato Institute, president of the Alabama Association of Scholars, a Mises Emerging Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada, a Humane Studies Fellow with the Institute for Humane Studies, a staff attorney for Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Supreme Court of Alabama, Assistant Attorney General in the State of Alabama Office of Attorney General Luther Strange, and Chairman of the Board of Managers of the Alabama Center for Law & Liberty. While in private practice in Atlanta, he represented non-profit corporations and litigated cases involving real property, contracts, collections, foreclosures, restrictive covenants, and real estate transactions. Mendenhall holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Furman University, a master’s degree in English from West Virginia University, a JD from West Virginia University College of Law, an LLM from Temple University Beasley School of Law, and a PhD in English from Auburn University. He graduated from Leadership Lee County (Alabama), the Alabama State Bar Leadership Forum (Class 14), and the Atlas Leadership Academy of Atlas Network.

He serves or has served on numerous boards of organizations as wide-ranging as the Alabama Public Television Foundation Authority (2019-present), the Society for Law and Culture (2017-present), the Young Professionals Board of the Alabama Humanities Foundation, and Trinity Christian School. He served on the advisory council of the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s Master of Arts degree and Certificate Program in Austrian Economics. He is an elected member and former trustee of the Philadelphia Society, an elected member of the Mont Pelerin Society, an associated scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute (2017-present), a member of the Advisory Council for the Law & Liberty Circle at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín (2024-present), a policy advisor for the Heartland Institute (2016-present), and president of the Montgomery Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society (2013-present).

In 2023, he received the inaugural Freedom and Opportunity Academic Prize from The Heritage Foundation and was an AmPhil Fundraising Fellow with the Center for Civil Society at American Philanthropic. In 2024, he was a Club for Growth Foundation Fellow and a Lincoln Fellow with the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.

He has authored hundreds of publications, including fiction and poetry, and studied under the creative writers Gilbert Allen, Michael Blumenthal, William Aarnes, and Chantel Acevedo. His books include Literature and Liberty (2014), Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Pragmatism, and the Jurisprudence of Agon (2017), Of Bees and Boys: Lines from a Southern Lawyer (2017), The Southern Philosopher: Collected Essays of John William Corrington (2017), Writers on Writing: Conversations with Allen Mendenhall (2019), The Three Ps of Liberty (2020), Shouting Softly: Essays on Law, Literature, and Culture (2021), A Glooming Peace this Morning (2023, a novel), and Controversies Among Conservatives: Conversations on Conservatism, Vol. II (2023) (edited with Marcus Witcher and Kevin Hughes).

His academic writing has appeared or is forthcoming in such peer-reviewed journals and law reviews as The Journal Jurisprudence, Public Choice, Journal of Markets & Morality, Journal of Private Enterprise, The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, The Political Science Reviewer, The Texas Review of Law and Politics, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, The South Carolina Review, Academic Questions, The Independent Review, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Modernist Cultures, and The British Journal of American Legal Studies, and in law reviews published by Georgetown University Law Center, UC Berkeley School of Law, The University of Texas School of Law, Emory University School of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law, and Michigan State University College of Law.

His writing for popular media has appeared in Newsweek, Fox News, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, Pacific Standard, The Hill, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The American Conservative, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, The Freeman, Liberty, RealClear Markets, Writer’s Digest, The University Bookman, The Daily Signal, Chronicles, The Christian Lawyer, The Conversation, and elsewhere. He has spoken at universities from Harvard University to Francisco Marroquín University.

He has been quoted or cited in Fox Business, Fox News, Forbes, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, National Review, The Daily Caller, Le Monde, Times Higher Education, The Blaze Media, The College Fix, Inside Higher Education, Campus Reform, and U.S. News and World Report. He frequently appears on radio and television on networks as wide-ranging as Fox News, Alabama Public Television, Al-Jazeera, Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News on NewsNation, Newsmax, Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” C-SPAN, and BBC World News.