Professor Zick graduated summa cum laude from Indiana University and summa cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he received the Francis E. Lucey, S.J. Award for graduating first in his class. While at Georgetown, Professor Zick was a Notes and Comments editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. Following law school, Professor Zick was an associate with the law firms of Williams and Connolly in Washington, D.C., where he assisted in the defense of congressional term limits in the Supreme Court of the United States, and Foley Hoag in Boston. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Levin H. Campbell of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Professor Zick also served as a Trial Attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the United States Department of Justice, where he defended the constitutionality and legality of a variety of federal programs and statutes.

In 2022, Professor Zick received the McGlothlin Award for Exceptional Teaching. He has received the Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence three times: in 2011, 2013 and 2017. He has also received numerous research professorships, including the William H. Cabell professorship.

Professor Zick has written on a variety of constitutional issues, with a special focus on the First Amendment. He is the author of five university press books on the subject: Speech out of Doors: Preserving First Amendment Liberties in Public Places (Cambridge U. Press 2009); The Cosmopolitan First Amendment: Protecting Transborder Expressive and Religious Liberties (Cambridge U. Press 2013); The Dynamic Free Speech Clause: Free Speech and its Relation to Other Constitutional Rights (Oxford U. Press 2018); and The First Amendment in the Trump Era (Oxford U. Press 2019); and Managed Dissent: The Law of Public Protest (Cambridge U. Press, 2023). He is also the co-author of a First Amendment casebook, The First Amendment: Cases and Theory (Wolters Kluwer 4th ed. 2022).

Professor Zick has been a frequent commentator in local, national, and international media regarding First Amendment, Second Amendment, and other constitutional issues. He has been a guest on national television and radio broadcasts, including All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC and the Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM. Professor Zick’s commentary has been published in The Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Monthly, Jurist, and The Conversation. He has been quoted frequently in the national press, including in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, FiveThirtyEight, Politifact, CNN, NBC, Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Professor Zick testified before Congress on the Occupy Wall Street protests and rights of free speech, assembly, and petition.