Akhil Reed Amar

Akhil Reed Amar (born September 6, 1958) is an American legal scholar known for his expertise in constitutional law and criminal procedure. He holds the position of Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. A Legal Affairs poll placed Amar among the top 20 contemporary US legal thinkers.

Life and career

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. He graduated from Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek, California in 1976. His brother, Vikram Amar, is dean of the University of Illinois College of Law.

Amar is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale College (B.A., 1980) and a graduate of the Yale Law School (J.D. 1984), where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Amar clerked for future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer when Stephen Breyer was still a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Amar is the author of numerous publications and books, most recently The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of our Era. The Supreme Court has cited his work in over three dozen cases.

In the Winter 1999 edition of the Hofstra Law Review, Amar criticized the Clinton impeachment and stated that it demonstrated how impeachment can be used as a weapon which causes "grave disruption" during elections.

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.

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.

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

Books

• The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles (1997) ISBN 0-300-06678-3
• For the People (with A. 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 P. Brest, S. Levinson, and J.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 L. 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