Robert Tsai

Robert L. Tsai

Professor of Law

Harry Elwood Warren Memorial Scholar

BA, magna cum laude, with Highest Honors in History and Political Science, UCLA
JD, Yale Law School


Biography

Robert L. Tsai is Professor of Law and Harry Elwood Warren Memorial Scholar at Boston University School of Law, where he teaches courses in constitutional law, presidential leadership, and individual rights. Professor Tsai has been named a ’24-’25 Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he will spend the year working on a new book project. Titled, “Reasoning from Injustice,” the project brings together pragmatism and popular constitutionalism to develop a humanistic approach to politics capable of diagnosing injustice as a social practice and overcoming the forces of indifference.

He is keenly interested in political culture, legal change, democratic design, inequality, and popular sovereignty. Professor Tsai is the author of four books: Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer’s Pursuit of Equal Justice for All (W.W. Norton 2024); Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation (W.W. Norton 2019); America’s Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community (Harvard 2014); and Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture (Yale 2008).

Professor Tsai’s latest book, Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer’s Pursuit of Equal Justice for All, explores the life and times of Stephen Bright, who for nearly 40 years led the Southern Center for Human Rights. SCHR’s experiences handling capital cases and prison condition suits teach us about the strategies and ideas that worked during the early decades of mass incarceration in America. Kirkus Reviews calls the book “an excellent complement to Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy,” and Stevenson himself declares it “an inspiring account of one of our nation’s greatest lawyers” and the “human rights he has passionately defended.”

Joshua Rothman, writer for the New Yorker, observed, “The gap between intuition and argument—between outrage and the best response to that outrage—is the subject of Robert Tsai’s Practical Equality.” Aziz Rana hailed America’s Forgotten Constitutions as “a remarkable feat of excavation” in the Texas Law Review, while Susan McWilliams called the book “magisterial… one of the most captivating works on American political thought and constitutional history to be written in the last several years.” In Perspectives on Politics, Beau Breslin said Tsai’s first book, Eloquence and Reason, was “fresh,” “sophisticated… the theory presented is subtle in its complexity,” while legal historian Anders Walker deemed it “nuanced, novel, and compelling.”

He is working on two other longer projects: one about the virtues of adaptability and capacity within a constitutional order; another about a civil rights lawyer who founded a legal services organization in Eastern Kentucky and battled to stem the damage from overmining the land.

Professor Tsai has authored numerous law review articles and peer-edited essays. A representative sample of his work includes: “Abortion Politics and the Rise of Movement Jurists,” 57 U.C. Davis Law Review 2149 (2024) (with Mary Ziegler); “After McCleskey,” 96 Southern California Law Review (forthcoming 2023); “Abandoning Animus,” 74 Alabama Law Review 755 (2023); “The Public Defender Movement in the Age of Mass Incarceration: Georgia’s Experience,” 1 Journal of American Constitutional History 85 (2023); “Can Sandel Dethrone Meritocracy?,” 1 American Journal of Law & Equality 70 (2021); “Inequality During a Pandemic, Parts I-II,” Harvard Law Review online (2020); “Manufactured Emergencies,”129 Yale Law Journal Forum 350 (2020); “Racial Purges,” 118 Michigan Law Review 1127 (2020); “Constitutional Borrowing,” 108 Michigan Law Review 459 (2010); “John Brown’s Constitution,” 51 Boston College Law Review 151 (2010); “Reconsidering Gobitis: An Exercise in Presidential Leadership,” 86 Washington University Law Review 363 (2008); and “Fire, Metaphor, and Constitutional Myth-Making,” 93 Georgetown Law Journal 181 (2004). Two of Tsai’s papers were selected for the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum—one in constitutional theory, one in constitutional history.

His scholarship has been featured by the New Yorker, Slate, NPR, MSNBC, Morning Joe, American Scholar, Daily Beast, Boston Globe, and Harvard Law Review. Additionally, he has served as a legal commentator on Meet the Press and MSNBC. His popular writings have appeared in the New York Review of Books, Washington Post, Politico, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Globe, Slate, and Boston Review.

Professor Tsai is a founding board member of the Journal of American Constitutional History, as well as Constitutional Studies. He was elected to the American Law Institute in July 2023.

Tsai is a graduate of Yale Law School and the University of California, Los Angeles. After law school, he clerked for Denny Chin, US District Court, SDNY, and Hugh Bownes, US Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Before joining BU Law, Professor Tsai taught at American University. He has also taught at the University of Oregon. In fall 2019, he served as the Clifford Scott Green Chair and Visiting Professor of Law at Temple University.

Publications

Scroll left to right to view all publications

  • Robert L. Tsai, Chapter 3: Civic Education and Democracy's Flaws, in Civic Education in Polarized Times: NOMOS LXVI (Elizabeth Beaumont and Eric Beerbohm,2024)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer's Pursuit of Equal Justice for All (2024)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai & Mary Ziegler, Abortion Politics and the Rise of Movement Jurists 57 U.C. Davis Law Review (2024)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Roads Not Taken on Affirmative Action 54 Seton Hall Law Review (2024)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Becoming Steve Bright 113 Kentucky Law Journal (2024)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Book Review: "Real Americans: National Identity, Violence, and the Constitution" by Jared A. Goldstein 138 Political Science Quarterly (2023)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, After McCleskey 96 Southern California Law Review (2023)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Abandoning Animus 74 Alabama Law Review (2023)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, The Public Defender Movement in the Age of Mass Incarceration: Georgia's Experience 1 Journal of American Constitutional History (2023)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Somewhere, USA, in After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America (Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, and Yohuru Williams,2022)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Why Judges Can't Save Democracy 72 Syracuse Law Review (2022)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, The Place of the Presidency in Historical Time 101 Boston University Law Review (2021)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, The New Abortion Vigilantism The New York Review of Books (2021)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Not Popular Enough no. 61 Democracy Journal (2021)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai & Christopher Robertson, Biden’s attempts to diversify federal courts can’t come fast enough The Hill (2021)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, The Future of Materialist Constitutionalism The New Rambler (2021) (book review)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, A Proper Burial 74 Arkansas Law Review (2021)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Legacies of Pragmatism 69 Drake Law Review (2021)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Supreme Court Precedent and the Politics of Repudiation, in Law's infamy : Understanding the Canon of Bad Law (Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas & Martha Merrill Umphrey,2021)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Can Sandel Dethrone Meritocracy? Comment on M. Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit 2021 American Journal of Law and Equality (2021)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Equality is a Brokered Idea 88 George Washington Law Review Arguendo (2020)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Racial Purges 118 Michigan Law Review (2020) (book review)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation (2019)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, The Hidden Costs of Dissent 34 Constitutional Commentary (2019)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Immigration Unilateralism and American Ethnonationalism 51 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal (2019)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Manufactured Emergencies 129 Yale Law Journal Forum (2019)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Review of Extraordinary Racial Politics by Fred Lee 106 Journal of American History (2019) (book review)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Considerations of History and Purpose in Constitutional Borrowing 28 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal (2019)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Obama's Conversion on Same-Sex Marriage: The Social Foundations of Individual Rights 50 Connecticut Law Review (2018)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Legal Language: Expansion, Consolidation, Resistance, in The Routledge Research Companion to Law and Humanities in Nineteenth-Century America (Nan Goodman & Simon Stern,2017)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Review of Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation by Nicholas Guyatt 104 Journal of American History (2017) (book review)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, A Tradition at War with Itself: A Reply to Professor Rana's Review of America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community 94 Texas Law Review (2016)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Review of The Civic Constitution: Civic Visions and Struggles in the Path Toward Constitutional Democracy by Elizabeth Beaumont 15 Contemporary Political Theory (2016) (book review)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Three Arguments About War 30 Constitutional Commentary (2015)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Review of Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United by Zephyr Teachout 102 Journal of American History (2015) (book review)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community (2014)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Conclusion. The Migration of Legal Ideas: Legislative Design and the Lawmaking Process, in Comparative Law in Legislative Drafting: The Increasing Importance of Dialogue Amongst Parliaments (Nicola Lupo and Lucia Scaffardi (eds.).,2014)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, "Simple" Takes on the Supreme Court 5 Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review (2013)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Introduction: The Politics of Hate 10 Journal of Hate Studies (2012)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai & Nelson Tebbe, Notes on Borrowing and Convergence 111 Columbia Law Review Sidebar (2011)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Aryans, Gender, and American Politics 4 Sexuality and Politics (2011)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, John Brown's Constitution 51 Boston College Law Review (2010)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, The Ethics of Melancholy Citizenship 89 Oregon Law Review (2010)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai & Nelson Tebbe, Constitutional Borrowing 108 Michigan Law Review (2010)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, From Words to Worlds: Exploring Constitutional Functionality by Beau Breslin 8 Perspectives on Politics (2010) (book review)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, First Amendment, in Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (David S. Tanenhaus,2009)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Public Forum, in Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (David S. Tanenhaus,2009)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Chambers v. Florida, in Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (David S. Tanenhaus,2009)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Sovereignty as Discourse 25 Constitutional Commentary (2008)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture (2008)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Reconsidering Gobitis: An Exercise in Presidential Leadership 86 Washington University Law Review (2008)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Democracy's Handmaid 86 Boston University Law Review (2006)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Sacred Visions of Law 90 Iowa Law Review (2005)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Fire, Metaphor, and Constitutional Myth-Making 93 Georgetown Law Journal (2004)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Speech and Strife 67 Law & Contemporary Problems (2004)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, Conceptualizing Constitutional Litigation as Anti-Government Expression: a Speech-Centered Theory of Court Access 51 American University Law Review (2002)
    Scholarly Commons
  • Robert L. Tsai, The System Worked: Our Schizophrenic Stance on Welfare 106 Yale Law Journal (1996) (book review)
    Scholarly Commons

In the Media

Scroll left to right to view all in the media posts

  • Raw Story April 29, 2025

    ‘Play Dumb Games, Win Dumb Prizes’: Law Firm Hits Back at Trump DOJ with Creative Tactic

    Robert Tsai is quoted.
    read more

  • The Boston Globe April 27, 2025

    Harvard Has Strong Legal Arguments Against Trump, Analysts Say

    Robert Tsai is quoted.
    read more

  • Miami Herald April 24, 2025

    Secretary of Student Visas: Marco Rubio Turns into Campus Gatekeeper

    Robert Tsai is quoted.
    read more

  • bbc news April 17, 2025

    Judge Says Trump Officials Could Be Found in Contempt. What Happens Next?

    Robert Tsai is quoted.
    read more

  • Talking Legal Ed April 2, 2025

    Robert L. Tsai (BU Law) Talks About Teaching Election Law and Politics

    Robert Tsai is interviewed.
    read more

  • GZero Media March 5, 2025

    Supreme Court Rules Against Trump on Foreign Aid, Spelling Potential Problems for Doge

    Robert L. Tsai is mentioned.
    read more

  • The Boston Globe February 27, 2025

    ‘Fear-Mongering’ or Emergency? As Trump Flexes Executive Power, Here’s What to Know About Constitutional Crises.

    Jed Shugerman and Robert Tsai are quoted.
    read more

  • BBC February 17, 2025

    The Republic of Indian Stream, the Small Country That Existed for Three Years Between the US and Canada and Today Gives Its Name to a Whiskey

    Robert Tsai is quoted.
    read more

  • NBC News February 10, 2025

    Meet the Press Now

    Robert Tsai is interviewed.
    read more

  • Reuters February 9, 2025

    Trump’s Government Shakeup May Test Supreme Court’s Role as Firewall

    Robert Tsai is quoted.
    read more

  • NBC News January 28, 2025

    Meet the Press NOW

    Robert Tsai is interviewed.
    read more

  • The Boston Globe January 16, 2025

    Trump’s Dangerous Bid to End Birthright Citizenship

    Robert Tsai is quoted.
    read more

  • Mother Jones November 26, 2024

    The Plot Against Birthright Citizenship

    Robert Tsai is quoted.
    read more

  • Public Books November 13, 2024

    The Fight for Justice Starts with Blocking Judges Who Are “Tough on Crime”

    Robert Tsai pens an opinion.
    read more

  • BU Today November 6, 2024

    What Does Donald Trump’s Election Mean for…

    Linda McClain, Sarah Sherman-Stokes, and Robert Tsai are quoted.
    read more

  • View All Articles

Stories from The Record

View All Stories

Activities & Engagements

No upcoming activities or engagements.

View All Activities & Engagements