{"id":74232,"date":"2020-10-21T14:53:26","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T18:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/?post_type=profile&p=74232"},"modified":"2026-01-14T11:47:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T16:47:56","slug":"robert-l-tsai","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/profile\/robert-l-tsai\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert L. Tsai"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert L. Tsai<\/strong> 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. He was appointed ’24-’25 Laurance Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s Pursuit of Equal Justice for All <\/i>(W.W. Norton 2024); <\/span>Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation<\/em> (W.W. Norton 2019); America\u2019s Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community<\/em> (Harvard 2014); and Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture<\/em> (Yale 2008).<\/p>\n

Professor Tsai’s latest book<\/span>, Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer\u2019s Pursuit of Equal Justice for All<\/em><\/a><\/span>, explores the life and times of Stephen Bright, who for nearly 40 years led the Southern Center for Human Rights. SCHR\u2019s 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<\/i> calls the book \u201can excellent complement to Bryan Stevenson\u2019s <\/span>Just Mercy<\/i>,\u201d and Stevenson himself declares it \u201can inspiring account of one of our nation\u2019s greatest lawyers\u201d and the \u201chuman rights he has passionately defended.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Joshua Rothman, writer for the New Yorker<\/em>, observed, \u201cThe gap between intuition and argument\u2014between outrage and the best response to that outrage\u2014is the subject of Robert Tsai\u2019s Practical Equality<\/em>.\u201d Aziz Rana hailed America\u2019s Forgotten Constitutions<\/em> as \u201ca remarkable feat of excavation\u201d in the Texas Law Review<\/em>, while Susan McWilliams called the book \u201cmagisterial\u2026 one of the most captivating works on American political thought and constitutional history to be written in the last several years.\u201d In Perspectives on Politics<\/em>, Beau Breslin said Tsai\u2019s first book, Eloquence and Reason<\/em>, was \u201cfresh,\u201d \u201csophisticated\u2026 the theory presented is subtle in its complexity,\u201d while legal historian Anders Walker deemed it \u201cnuanced, novel, and compelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

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. Battle for the Soul of Coal Country<\/i> is under contract with NYU Press.<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Tsai has authored numerous law review articles and peer-edited essays. A representative sample of his work includes: \u201cAbortion Politics and the Rise of Movement Jurists,\u201d 57 <\/span>U.C. Davis Law Review 2149<\/i> (2024) (with Mary Ziegler); <\/span>\u201cAfter McCleskey<\/em>,\u201d 96\u00a0<\/span>Southern California Law Review<\/i> 1031 (2023); \u201cAbandoning Animus,\u201d 74 Alabama Law Review<\/em> 755 (2023); \u201cThe Public Defender Movement in the Age of Mass Incarceration: Georgia\u2019s Experience,\u201d 1 Journal of American Constitutional History<\/em> 85 (2023); \u201cCan Sandel Dethrone Meritocracy?,\u201d 1 American Journal of Law & Equality<\/em> 70 (2021); <\/span>\u201cInequality During a Pandemic, Parts I-II,\u201d Harvard Law Review<\/em> online (2020); \u201cManufactured Emergencies,\u201d129 Yale Law Journal Forum<\/em> 350 (2020); \u201cRacial Purges,\u201d 118 Michigan Law Review<\/em> 1127 (2020); \u201cConstitutional Borrowing,\u201d 108 Michigan Law Review<\/em> 459 (2010) (with Nelson Tebbe)<\/span>; \u201cJohn Brown\u2019s Constitution,\u201d 51 Boston College Law Review<\/em> 151 (2010); \u201cReconsidering Gobitis<\/em>: An Exercise in Presidential Leadership,\u201d 86 Washington University Law Review<\/em> 363 (2008); and \u201cFire, Metaphor, and Constitutional Myth-Making,\u201d 93 Georgetown Law Journal<\/em> 181 (2004). Two of Tsai\u2019s papers were selected for the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum\u2014one in constitutional theory, one in constitutional history.<\/p>\n

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

Professor Tsai presented the George Barrett Social Justice Lecture at Vanderbilt Law School in spring 2024. In fall 2024, he gave the Constitution Day lecture at Hamilton College. He gave the 2021 Constitution Day lecture at University of Pittsburgh School of Law. In 2014, he had the distinction of presenting a Constitution Day lecture at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., drawn from his book, <\/span>America\u2019s Forgotten Constitutions<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Tsai is a founding board member of the <\/span>Journal of American Constitutional History<\/i>, as well as <\/span>Constitutional Studies<\/i>. He was elected to the American Law Institute in July 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6977,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/74232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6977"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/74232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122337,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/74232\/revisions\/122337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}