Professor Akhil Reed Amar Gives 2000 Foulston & Siefkin Lecture
Professor Akhil Reed Amar presented the 2000 Foulston & Siefkin Lecture on April 19, 2000. Titled Comparative Constitutional Law, American Style, Prof. Amar's paper discusses two important fields of constitutional scholarship that have tended to develop in isolation from each other: state constitutionalism, and comparative constitutional law. He focuses on governmental structure by identifying similarities and differences among the fifty-one American constitutions.
Professor Akhil Reed Amar is a Professor of Law at Yale University. Professor Amar received his B.A. summa cum laude, in 1980 from Yale College, and his J.D. in 1984 from Yale Law School, where he served as editor for the Yale Law Journal. After clerking for then Judge Stephen Breyer, he joined the Yale Law School faculty in 1985, where he has been Southmayd Professor of Law since 1993. Professor Amar teaches courses in constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. In 1994, he received the Paul Bator award from the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, and in 1997 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of law by Suffolk University. In 1995, the National Law Journal named him as one of forty "Rising Stars in the Law," and, in 1997, The American Lawyer placed him on their "Public Sector 45" list.
Professor Amar has delivered endowed lectures at over two dozen colleges and universities, and has written widely on constitutional issues for such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Monthly, Policy Review, and Slate. He is a contributing editor to both The New Republic and The American Lawyer. His many law review articles have been widely cited by scholars, judges, and justices, and he is the author of four recent books: The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles (Yale Univ. Press, 1997), For the People (with Alan Hirsch) (The Free Press, 1998), The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (Yale Univ. Press, 1998), and Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (editor, with Paul Brest, Sanford Levinson, and Jack Balkin) (4th edition, Aspen, 2000).
Michael Cargnel (Executive Editor), Prof. Amar, Brenda Mesker (Editor, v.39), JoAnn Stone (Comments Editor), Prof. Myrl Duncan (Faculty Advisor) at reception prior to the lecture.
Each year for the past twenty-two years the Wichita law firm of Foulston & Siefkin has generously sponsored the Foulston & Siefkin Lecture Series. This lecture series brings a prominent legal scholar to Washburn University School of Law to challenge and enhance the legal thinking of our students and faculty and the Washburn Law Journal readership. The visiting scholar delivers a lecture and also provides an article for the next volume of the Journal.
Professor Amar also gave the after-dinner address at the Washburn Law Journal/Moot Court Banquet on Tuesday, April 18, 2000.
