Event Date
"Where American Constitutional Democracy Stands a Quarter Way Through the 21st Century"
Distinguished Professor Vikram Amar will discuss, among other things, constitutional issues raised today by the upcoming presidential election involving a candidate who is facing several state and federal criminal investigations, recent Supreme Court decisions involving elections and race, and the state of legal education and higher education that have been vital to constitutional democracy for the last century.
Vikram Amar returned to UC Davis as a Distinguished Professor of Law in 2023 after serving as the dean and the Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign College of Law since 2015. Directly before that he was a Professor and the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at King Hall, from 2008 to 2015. Amar has also taught law at Berkeley School of Law, Hastings College of Law and UCLA School of Law.
Amar is one of the most eminent and frequently cited authorities in constitutional law, federal courts, and civil procedure. He has produced several books and more than 60 articles in leading law reviews. He is a co-author (along with Akhil Reed Amar) of the upcoming revised multi-volume Treatise on Constitutional Law (West Publishing Co.) pioneered by Ron Rotunda and John Nowak. He is also a co-author (along with Jonathan Varat and Evan Caminker) of Constitutional Law: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press, 16th ed. 2021), a co-author on multiple volumes of the Wright & Miller Federal Practice and Procedure Treatise (West Publishing), and a co-author (along with John Oakley) of a one-volume treatise on American Civil Procedure (Kluwer, 2008). He writes a biweekly column on constitutional matters for Justia.com, for several years wrote a monthly column on legal education for abovethelaw.com, is a frequent commentator on local and national radio and TV, and has penned dozens of op-ed pieces for major newspapers and magazines.
A strong proponent of public and professional engagement, Amar is an elected member of the American Law Institute and has served as a consultant for, among others, the National Association of Attorneys General, the United States Department of Justice, the California Attorney General’s Office, the ACLU of Southern California, and the Center for Civic Education. For one year he chaired the Civil Procedure Section of the Association of American Law Schools.
Amar earned his bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and his juris doctor from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor for the Yale Law Journal. He then clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court before joining Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he handled a variety of complex civil and white-collar criminal matters. It appears that Professor Amar was the first person of South Asian heritage to clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, and was the first American-born person of Indian descent to serve as a dean of a major American law school. Follow Dean Amar’s bi-weekly column on Justia.com and read archived posts from his FindLaw.com column.