Akhil Reed Amar

Amar was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his parents were medical students from India studying at the University of Michigan. His parents later became U.S. citizens.[3] He has two brothers, one of whom, Vikram Amar, also became a law professor and serves as dean of the University of Illinois College of Law.[4] Amar graduated from Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek, California, in 1976.[5]

Amar attended Yale University, where he double majored in history and economics. He was a member of the Yale Debate Association and won its Thacher Memorial Prize, as well as Yale's Louis Laun Award for excellence in economics. Amar graduated from Yale in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude. He then attended Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1984.

After law school, Amar clerked from 1984 to 1985 for then-judge Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, who in 1994 became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Amar then interviewed for a Supreme Court clerkship with Justice John Paul Stevens but did not receive an offer.

In 1985, Amar joined the faculty of the Yale Law School, where he has remained ever since. He is the author of publications and books, including The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840. Justices across the spectrum on the Supreme Court have cited his work in more than four dozen cases—tops among living non-emeritus scholars. In surveys of judicial citations and/or scholarly citations, he typically ranks among America’s five most-cited mid-career legal scholars.

Amar was a consultant to the television show The West Wing, on which the character Josh Lyman refers to him in an episode in Season 5.[6]

Amar has repeatedly served as a Visiting Professor of Law at Pepperdine School of Law and at Columbia Law School and was recently a visiting professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also lectured for One Day University. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.[7]

In 2008, U.S. presidential candidate Mike Gravel said that he would name Amar to the Supreme Court if elected president.[8]

Amar, a self-described liberal, has since engaged in advocacy considered controversial among progressive outlets, bloggers, and professors.[9][10][11] He argued in favor of Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Court[12] and argued that overturning Roe v. Wade would not affect other privacy rights.[13]

Since early 2021 he has co-hosted a weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, with a fellow Yale alumnus, Andy Lipka. Guests have included Bob Woodward,[14] Floyd Abrams,[15] and Gary Hart.[16]

• The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles (1997) ISBN 0-300-06678-3
• For the People (with Alan Hirsch) (1997) ISBN 0-684-87102-5
• The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (1998) ISBN 0-300-07379-8
• Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (ed. with Paul Brest, Sanford Levinson, and Jack M. Balkin), (2000) ISBN 0-7355-5062-X
• America's Constitution: A Biography (2005) ISBN 1-4000-6262-4
• America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By (2012) ISBN 978-0-465-02957-0
• The Bill of Rights Primer: A Citizen's Guidebook to the American Bill of Rights (with Les Adams) (2013) ISBN 978-1-62087-572-8
• The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Republic (2015) ISBN 978-0-465-06590-5
• The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of Our Era (2016) ISBN 978-0-465-09633-6
• The Words that Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840 (2021) ISBN 978-0-465-09635-0

• National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

• Yale Law School bio
• Professor Amar's home page
• Columbia Law School
• Columbia Law School biography Archived 2016-08-29 at the Wayback Machine
• University of Pennsylvania Law School biography
• Views on the Supreme Court
• Gravel's Justice of Choice
• Appearances on C-SPAN