At the time of his confirmation hearings, he told Senate investigators that his net worth was about $2.2 million, with income from his job as a law professor and from part-time litigation for the Chicago law firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt.

His former clients included corporate titans like NBC, GTE and Bell South as well as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Boy Scouts of America, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, most of whom he represented on First Amendment issues.

David Getches, dean of the University of Colorado's law school, calls McConnell one of the country's leading constitutional scholars. He said McConnell's support by both liberal and conservative academics stems from his intellectual integrity.

"What gets the respect of law professors regardless of their political leanings is that McConnell is a scholar of enormous intellectual integrity," Getches said. "It doesn't matter whether you agree with him. You can see his principled basis unalloyed by politics."