John O. McGinnis is the George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern University School of Law. His work focuses on trade law, technology law, and antitrust. He clerked on U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is a past winner of Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40.

Professor McGinnis holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He holds an MA from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology.