 Smith served as a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute, a member of the Board of Scholars at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Buckeye Institute.He also sat on the Advisory Board of the Institute for Law and Politics at the University of Minnesota Law School, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Election Law Journal.In 2007–08, he was an adviser on the Constitution and the Courts for the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.