Yale Scholar, Author to Present Fiscus Lecture Oct. 13

Yale University Scholar Akhil Reed Amar will discuss "America's Constitution Over the Centuries--As Seen from New York," when he delivers the Ronald J. Fiscus Lecture at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13. Free and open to the public, the talk will be in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall.

Amar teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School, where he serves as the Southmayd Professor of Law and Political Science. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale College, where he earned a B.A. degree in 1980, and a 1984 graduate of Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

After serving as a clerk for Judge Stephen Breyer at the U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985. He is a co-author of a leading constitutional law case book titled Processes of Constitutional Decision Making and the author of several books including the recently published America's Constitution: A Biography (Random House, 2005). Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard, calls America's Constitution "the best biography ever written about the U.S. Constitution. ... Marvelously readable and breathtakingly informative, Amar's biography of our nation's founding document fills a huge void--and fills it brilliantly."

The Fiscus Lecture was inaugurated in 1991 by the college's Department of Government to honor the late Ronald J. Fiscus, a Skidmore faculty member from 1980 to his death in 1990. Professor Fiscus was a constitutional law specialist and a key contributor to the development of a minor in law and society at Skidmore.