Robert L. Tsai
- Courses2
- Reviews2
- School: American University Washington College of Law
- Campus:
- Department: Law
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Location:
4300 Nebraska Ave NW
Washington, DC - 20016 - Dates at American University Washington College of Law: April 2010 - January 2014
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Biography
American University Washington College of Law - Law
Author and Law Professor, Follow me on Twitter @robertltsai
Higher Education
Robert
Tsai
Washington, District Of Columbia
My third book, PRACTICAL EQUALITY: FORGING JUSTICE IN A DIVIDED NATION (W.W. Norton 2019) explores why we have such difficulty doing the hard work of equality. I offer several ways we can break ideological gridlock in the interests of justice. Order here: http://bit.ly/PrEq
My last book was AMERICA’S FORGOTTEN CONSTITUTIONS: DEFIANT VISIONS OF POWER AND COMMUNITY (Harvard 2014). My first book was ELOQUENCE AND REASON: CREATING A FIRST AMENDMENT CULTURE (Yale 2008). Buy a book: http://bit.ly/TsaiRL
Download my law review articles and essays here: http://bit.ly/TsaiSSRN
Specialties: Constitutional law, civil rights, criminal procedure, federal courts, First Amendment, social movements, democratic theory, presidential power, jurisprudence, law and literature
Experience
American University Washington College of Law
Professor of Law
Robert worked at American University Washington College of Law as a Professor of Law
Yale University Press
Book Author
Robert worked at Yale University Press as a Book Author
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Book Author
Robert worked at W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. as a Book Author
Temple University - James E. Beasley School of Law
Clifford Scott Green Visiting Professor of Constitutional Law
Clifford Scott Green Chair and Visiting Professor of Law
Harvard University Press
Book Author
Robert worked at Harvard University Press as a Book Author
Education
Yale Law School
JD
Law
University of California, Los Angeles
B.A., History & Political Science, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Highest Departmental Honors
History & Political Science
1993 Carey McWilliams Award for Best History Honors Thesis, College Honors
Publications
Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture
Yale University Press
During the twentieth century, Americans gained trust in its commitments, turned the First Amendment into an instrument for social progress, and exercised their rhetorical freedom to create a common language of rights. Robert L. Tsai explains that the guarantees of the First Amendment have become part of a governing culture and nationwide priority. Examining the rhetorical tactics of activists, presidents, and lawyers, he illustrates how committed citizens seek to promote or destabilize a convergence in constitutional ideas. Eloquence and Reason reveals the social and institutional processes through which foundational ideas are generated and defends a cultural role for the courts. "A provocative meditation on the ways the metaphors used in constitutional doctrine empower, limit, create, and recreate the public over which the written Constitution is said to assert authority. Intriguing case studies arise from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Christian Right of the 1980s, and the attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1940s."—Mark V. Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 "Tsai's exciting work on the interplay between the Supreme Court and the executive branch in the nineteen forties sheds new light on the origins of modern constitutional law. And his new account of the relationship between language and power in political discourse is sure to be controversial and should be widely read."—H. Jefferson Powell, Duke Law School "This beautifully written, carefully argued, and thought-provoking book illuminates the way the practice of free speech and broad societal engagement with constitutional ideas animate American democracy."—Mary L. Dudziak, University of Southern California, and author of Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey "[A] provocative and eloquent book."--Perspectives on Politics
Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture
Yale University Press
During the twentieth century, Americans gained trust in its commitments, turned the First Amendment into an instrument for social progress, and exercised their rhetorical freedom to create a common language of rights. Robert L. Tsai explains that the guarantees of the First Amendment have become part of a governing culture and nationwide priority. Examining the rhetorical tactics of activists, presidents, and lawyers, he illustrates how committed citizens seek to promote or destabilize a convergence in constitutional ideas. Eloquence and Reason reveals the social and institutional processes through which foundational ideas are generated and defends a cultural role for the courts. "A provocative meditation on the ways the metaphors used in constitutional doctrine empower, limit, create, and recreate the public over which the written Constitution is said to assert authority. Intriguing case studies arise from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Christian Right of the 1980s, and the attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1940s."—Mark V. Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 "Tsai's exciting work on the interplay between the Supreme Court and the executive branch in the nineteen forties sheds new light on the origins of modern constitutional law. And his new account of the relationship between language and power in political discourse is sure to be controversial and should be widely read."—H. Jefferson Powell, Duke Law School "This beautifully written, carefully argued, and thought-provoking book illuminates the way the practice of free speech and broad societal engagement with constitutional ideas animate American democracy."—Mary L. Dudziak, University of Southern California, and author of Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey "[A] provocative and eloquent book."--Perspectives on Politics
Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture
Yale University Press
During the twentieth century, Americans gained trust in its commitments, turned the First Amendment into an instrument for social progress, and exercised their rhetorical freedom to create a common language of rights. Robert L. Tsai explains that the guarantees of the First Amendment have become part of a governing culture and nationwide priority. Examining the rhetorical tactics of activists, presidents, and lawyers, he illustrates how committed citizens seek to promote or destabilize a convergence in constitutional ideas. Eloquence and Reason reveals the social and institutional processes through which foundational ideas are generated and defends a cultural role for the courts. "A provocative meditation on the ways the metaphors used in constitutional doctrine empower, limit, create, and recreate the public over which the written Constitution is said to assert authority. Intriguing case studies arise from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Christian Right of the 1980s, and the attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1940s."—Mark V. Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 "Tsai's exciting work on the interplay between the Supreme Court and the executive branch in the nineteen forties sheds new light on the origins of modern constitutional law. And his new account of the relationship between language and power in political discourse is sure to be controversial and should be widely read."—H. Jefferson Powell, Duke Law School "This beautifully written, carefully argued, and thought-provoking book illuminates the way the practice of free speech and broad societal engagement with constitutional ideas animate American democracy."—Mary L. Dudziak, University of Southern California, and author of Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey "[A] provocative and eloquent book."--Perspectives on Politics
Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture
Yale University Press
During the twentieth century, Americans gained trust in its commitments, turned the First Amendment into an instrument for social progress, and exercised their rhetorical freedom to create a common language of rights. Robert L. Tsai explains that the guarantees of the First Amendment have become part of a governing culture and nationwide priority. Examining the rhetorical tactics of activists, presidents, and lawyers, he illustrates how committed citizens seek to promote or destabilize a convergence in constitutional ideas. Eloquence and Reason reveals the social and institutional processes through which foundational ideas are generated and defends a cultural role for the courts. "A provocative meditation on the ways the metaphors used in constitutional doctrine empower, limit, create, and recreate the public over which the written Constitution is said to assert authority. Intriguing case studies arise from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Christian Right of the 1980s, and the attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1940s."—Mark V. Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 "Tsai's exciting work on the interplay between the Supreme Court and the executive branch in the nineteen forties sheds new light on the origins of modern constitutional law. And his new account of the relationship between language and power in political discourse is sure to be controversial and should be widely read."—H. Jefferson Powell, Duke Law School "This beautifully written, carefully argued, and thought-provoking book illuminates the way the practice of free speech and broad societal engagement with constitutional ideas animate American democracy."—Mary L. Dudziak, University of Southern California, and author of Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey "[A] provocative and eloquent book."--Perspectives on Politics
America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community
Harvard University Press
The U.S. Constitution opens by proclaiming the sovereignty of all citizens: "We the People." Robert Tsai's gripping history of alternative constitutions invites readers into the circle of those who have rejected this ringing assertion--the defiant groups that refused to accept the Constitution's definition of who "the people" are and how their authority should be exercised. America's Forgotten Constitutions is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Tsai chronicles eight episodes in which discontented citizens took the extraordinary step of drafting a new constitution. He examines the alternative Americas envisioned by John Brown (who dreamed of a republic purged of slavery), Robert Barnwell Rhett (the Confederate "father of secession"), and Etienne Cabet (a French socialist who founded a utopian society in Illinois). Other dreamers include the University of Chicago academics who created a world constitution for the nuclear age; the Republic of New Afrika, which demanded a separate country carved from the Deep South; and the contemporary Aryan movement, which plans to liberate America from multiculturalism and feminism. Countering those who treat constitutional law as a single tradition, Tsai argues that the ratification of the Constitution did not quell debate but kindled further conflicts over basic questions of power and community. He explains how the tradition mutated over time, inspiring generations and disrupting the best-laid plans for simplicity and order. Idealists on both the left and right will benefit from reading these cautionary tales.
