Robert L. Tsai began his academic career at the University of Oregon, where he
received the university's Lorry I. Lokey Award for exemplary interdisciplinary
scholarship and the law school's Orlando J. Hollis Teaching Award. His papers have
twice been selected for the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum: once in constitutional
theory and once in constitutional history. Professor Tsai joined the law faculty of
American University in 2008 and was promoted to full professor the following year. He
received the Elizabeth Payne Cubberly Scholarship Award in 2010. 

Before entering the academy, he clerked for Hugh H. Bownes, U.S. Court of Appeals for the
First Circuit, and Denny Chin, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Professor Tsai has litigated a number of constitutional issues before federal and state
courts. 

Professor Tsai's primary research interests include constitutional law, legal
history, democratic theory, and criminal procedure. His book, Eloquence and Reason:
Creating a First Amendment Culture (Yale University Press 2008), theorizes the rise of
Americans' modern First Amendment value system and the role of courts in sustaining
that system. He is completing a book that explores overlooked American constitutions,
America's Forgotten Constitutions: Visions of Power and Community After the Founding
(Harvard University Press, 2013). 

Articles

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Aryans, Gender, and American Politics, Sexuality and Politics (2011)

This short essay discusses some of the ways in which the Aryan movement in America...

 

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Notes on Borrowing and Convergence (with Nelson Tebbe), Columbia Law Review Sidebar (2011)

This is a response to Jennifer E. Laurin, "Trawling for Herring: Lessons in Doctrinal Borrowing...

 

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The Ethics of Melancholy Citizenship, Oregon Law Review (2010)

As a body of work, the poetry of Langston Hughes presents a vision of how...

 

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John Brown's Constitution, Boston College Law Review (2010)

It will surprise many Americans to learn that before John Brown and his men briefly...

 

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Review of Beau Breslin's "From Words to Worlds", Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals (2010)
 

Books

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Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture (2008)

This book presents a general theory to explain how the words in the Constitution become...

 

Reviews

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Book Review of Beau Breslin, "From Words to Worlds: Exploring Constitutional Functionality", Perspectives on Politics (2010)

This is a review of Beau Breslin's book, "From Words to Worlds: Exploring Constitutional Functionality"...

 

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Sovereignty as Discourse, Constitutional Commentary (2008)

This is a review of Howard Schweber's book, "The Language of Liberal Constitutionalism" (Cambridge University...

 

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The System Worked: Our Schizophrenic Stance on Welfare, Yale Law Journal (1996)

This is a review of Steven M. Teles's book, Whose Welfare? AFDC and Elite Politics...