Stacey L. Sovereign is a visiting legal fellow at The Buckeye Institute.

Sovereign is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where she teaches Introduction to Legal Research, Writing, and Analysis I and II. 

During her career, Sovereign served in all three branches of the federal government. In the executive branch, she served in then-Vice President George H.W. Bush’s office and several offices in the U.S. Department of Justice, including as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. In the legislative branch, Sovereign served as investigative counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics. She began her career in the judicial branch, serving as a law clerk for Judge Kenneth W. Starr on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 

Sovereign has also practiced law in the private sector. She was one of two in-house counsels and later the vice president of human resources for the Marine Spill Response Corporation. She also worked as an associate for O’Melveny & Myers in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office and as a software engineer for IBM.

A graduate with high honors, Sovereign earned her B.A. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, where she was an Echols Scholar and received the John White Stevenson Fund Prize for Best Honors Thesis. 

Sovereign received her J.D. with distinction from Stanford University Law School, where she was the co-winner of the Walter J. Cummings Kirkwood Moot Court Prize for Best Brief, the Marion Rice Kirkwood Award for Best Team of Advocates, the Lawrason Driscoll Moot Court Award, and the Hilmer Oehlmann, Jr. Award for Excellence in Legal Research and Writing.