Hans A. von Spakovsky is a leading national expert on a wide range of legal and constitutional issues, including civil rights, elections, the First Amendment, immigration, executive authority, the rule of law, and government reform.
He is the former Senior Legal Fellow and Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation where he hosted the Case in Point podcast.
He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Public Interest Legal Foundation and a member of the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. von Spakovsky is a former member of President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
From 2006 to 2007, von Spakovsky was a member of the Federal Election Commission. He served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2002 to 2005. Prior to entering public service, Hans von Spakovsky worked for 17 years as a government affairs consultant, in a corporate legal department, and in private practice.
He is a 1984 graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Law and received a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981, which he attended on a National Merit Scholarship.
He is the 2016 winner of the Drs. W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award from the Heritage Foundation and received Meritorious Service Awards from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2003, 2004, and 2005.
von Spakovsky is the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” (Encounter 2012); “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department” (HarperCollins/Broadside 2014); and “Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote” (Encounter 2021). His 2011 series with J. Christian Adams, “Every Single One.” at PJ Media was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and his articles have appeared in Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal.