Roger Pilon holds the Cato Institute's B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, which he has held since it was established in 1998. He joined Cato as a senior fellow in October 1988 and, until 2019, has served as director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies, which he founded in 1989; vice president for legal affairs, which he was named in 1999; and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review, which he founded in 2001.

Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, at OPM,  State, and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University's School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and abroad, and he testifies often before Congress.

His writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC's Nightline, CBS's 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.

Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.