Date/Time
Date(s) - 05/02/2019
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Location
The Baltimore Country Club - Five Farms

Categories

• Yale Events

Join us on Thursday, May 2nd at the The Baltimore Country Club (FIVE FARMS location) to welcome Yale Law School Professor Akhil Reed Amar (ES ’80, LAW ’84).

For the first time in our lifetime – and for one of the few times in modern history – all four major federal institutions of power were in play in the the 2016 election.  When the two national conventions met that year, Democrats had a real chance to win control of the House, Senate, Presidency, and Supreme Court.  Instead, the Republicans swept the field and emerged in control of all four institutions, even thought Donald Trump lost the (legally irrelevant) national popular presidential vote.  Today, as a result of the 2018 midterm elections, divided government has returned; like every president since Lyndon Johnson except Jimmy Carter, the current president will have to confront a House of Representatives controlled by the opposing party.

In this talk, based in part on his latest book, The Constitution Today, Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar will discuss the constitutional significance of some of these developments and will touch upon a wide range of modern cases and controversies – from gun control to gay rights, from the electoral college to presidential succession, from campaign finance to filibuster reform, from the presidential impeachments to judicial nominations.  Come prepared to ask any question you like about America’s constitutional system – past, present, and future.

Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for then Judge (now Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. His work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than three dozen cases—tops in his generation. He regularly testifies before Congress at the invitation of both parties; and in surveys of judicial citations and/or scholarly citations, he invariably ranks among America’s five most-cited mid-career legal scholars. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of the American Bar Foundation’s Outstanding Scholar Award. In 2008 he received the DeVane Medal—Yale’s highest award for teaching excellence. He has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show, The West Wing, and his constitutional scholarship has been showcased on a wide range of broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Up with Chris Hayes, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Morning Joe, AC360, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 11th Hour with Brian Williams, Fox News @Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal. He is the author of dozens of law review articles and several books, including The Constitution and Criminal Procedure (1997), The Bill of Rights(1998—winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005—winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012—named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), The Law of the Land (2015), and The Constitution Today (2016—named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Timemagazine). In 2017 he received the Howard Lamar Award for outstanding service to Yale alumni. He is Yale’s only currently active professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown—the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.

This event is being sponsored by the AYA-Redpath Speakers Program which sends current Yale faculty and administrators to speak to alumni at Yale Club luncheons, receptions, annual dinners and other special events.  We are very pleased to have support from the Robert U. Redpath Jr. ’28 Fund to make this important program possible.

Registration here.