Yale Law Professor Presented New Theory on First Amendment in Annual Lecture at Capital University Law School

April 6, 2009

Akhil Reed Amar presented Capital University Law School's 30th Annual John E. Sullivan Lecture on Fri., April 3. Amar is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. His lecture, “How America’s Constitution Affirmed Freedom of Speech Even Before the First Amendment,” offered a new theory on the First Amendment and also celebrates the 40th anniversary of the landmark decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio.

Professor Vincent Blasi, the Corliss Lamont Professor of Civil Liberties at Columbia Law School and the James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, and Professor Susan Gilles, a constitutional law and first amendment scholar at Capital University Law School, were commentators at the event.

Amar is the author of America’s Constitution: A Biography (Random House 2005), which won the ABA Silver Gavel Award of 2006. His 1998 book, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (Yale University Press), earned the ABA Certificate of Merit and the Yale University Press Governors Award. Amar is the co-editor of a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decision-making and is also the author of The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles (Yale Univ. Press, 1997). He joined the Yale law faculty in 1985, after clerking on the First Circuit for Judge Stephen Breyer. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2008 he received the DeVane Medal–Yale's highest award for teaching excellence. He has delivered endowed lectures at numerous colleges and universities and he has written widely on constitutional issues in both law journals and general-interest publications.

The John E. Sullivan Lecture, sponsored by the Capital University Law Review, was established in honor of Professor Emeritus John Edward Sullivan, a dedicated teacher and scholar who was appointed to the Law School faculty in 1953 and who also served as acting dean and academic dean during his tenure. The Sullivan Lecture is presented each academic year by a distinguished legal scholar who addresses a matter of significance to the Law School and to the greater legal community. The Sullivan Lecture is made possible through an endowment established by Herbert and Margith Kunmann, friends and benefactors of Capital University Law School. Their son, Edmond J. Kunmann, is a 1985 graduate of Capital Law School. The endowed lecture has attracted some of the nation’s leading legal scholars and practitioners, including Erwin Chemerinsky, Robert M. Cover, Lee C. Bollinger, Owen M. Fiss, Paul Carrington, Eleanor Holmes Norton, The Hon. Louis H. Pollak, Elizabeth Bartholet, G. Edward White, and Randy Barnett.