Herbert J. Storing was born on January 29, 1928, in Ames, Iowa. He served in the United States Army from 1946 to 1948, and received his A.B. degree from Colgate University in 1950. He then attended the University of Chicago, earning his A.M. in 1951 and Ph.D. in 1956. He was a Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom from 1953 to 1955 and also received research grants from the Rockefeller, Ford, and Relm Foundations and from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Storing served as senior research assistant at the London School of Economics; as assistant, associate, and professor of political science at the University of Chicago (1956–77); and as director of the Telluride summer program at the Hampton Institute in 1967. He was Visiting Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Jurisprudence at Colgate University from 1968 to 1969, and part-time professor of political science at Northern Illinois University from 1969 to 1975.

At the time of his death in September 1977, Storing was Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he also served as director of the Study of the Presidency at the White Burkett Miller Center for Public Affairs. He was also a member of the President’s Commission on White House Fellows.

He is coauthor of The State and the Farmer; editor and contributor to Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics; editor of What Country Have I? Political Writings by Black Americans; editor of the seven-volume The Complete Anti-Federalist; author of What the Anti-Federalists Were For; and author of numerous essays on the American Founding, constitutional law, public administration, American political thought, and the American presidency.