Robert L. Tsai is Professor of Law at American University, Washington College of Law. Tsai began his academic career at the University of Oregon in 2002, 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 were twice selected for the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum: once in constitutional theory and once in constitutional history. He joined the law faculty of American University in 2008, and was promoted to full professor the following year. In 2010 he received the law school's Elizabeth Payne Cubberly Scholarship Award. Tsai's primary research interests include constitutional law, American political culture, and democratic theory. His first book, "Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture" (Yale University Press, 2008), theorizes the rise of twentieth century First Amendment culture. His current project, an investigation of lost and failed American constitutions, will be published in 2013: "Defiant Designs: America's Forgotten Constitutions" (under contract with Harvard University Press).
Articles
Aryans, Gender, and American Politics, Sexuality and Politics (2011)
This short essay discusses some of the ways in which the Aryan movement in America...
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...
The Ethics of Melancholy Citizenship, Oregon Law Review (2010)
As a body of work, the poetry of Langston Hughes presents a vision of how...
John Brown's Constitution, Boston College Law Review (2010)
It will surprise many Americans to learn that before John Brown and his men briefly...
Constitutional Borrowing (with Nelson Tebbe), Michigan Law Review (2009)
Borrowing from one domain to promote ideas in another domain is a staple of constitutional...
Books
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
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"...
Sovereignty as Discourse, Constitutional Commentary (2008)
This is a review of Howard Schweber's book, "The Language of Liberal Constitutionalism" (Cambridge University...
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...