Robert Tsai
Professor of Law
Office: Room 430
Phone: 202-274-4370
E-mail: rtsai@wcl.american.edu
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. After receiving tenure, Professor Tsai joined the law faculty of American University in 2008. He was promoted to full professor in 2009.
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's primary research interests include American political culture, the discourses of popular sovereignty, radical constitutionalism, the rules of criminal procedure, and the interaction between courts and other institutions. 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 has two book projects underway: one investigating the social conditions under which presidents act to advance or erode individual rights; and another recovering forgotten American constitutions and liberation documents.
Currently Teaching
Degrees & Universities
- J.D., Yale Law School 1997
- B.A., University of California at Los Angeles 1993 (magna cum laude; Highest Departmental Honors)
Selected Publications
- Robert Tsai, Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture (Yale U. Press 2008).
- Robert Tsai, John Brown's Constitution, 51 B.C. L. Rev. __ (2010). SSRN Link
- Nelson Tebbe & Robert Tsai, Constitutional Borrowing, 108 Mich. L. Rev. (2009). SSRN Link
- Robert Tsai, Reconsidering Gobitis: An Exercise in Presidential Leadership, 86 Wash. U. L. Rev. 363 (2008).
- Robert Tsai, Fire, Metaphor, and Constitutional Myth-Making, 93 Geo. L.J. 181 (2004).
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