Isaac Barnes May is a scholar specializing in the First Amendment, focusing on how religion, speech, and press freedoms developed in response to social and technological changes. He is a Resident Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and the Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression. In his role at the Abrams Institute, Isaac is working on a project studying the constitutional protections for journalistic freedom under the Press Clause.
Isaac is a graduate of Earlham College, Harvard Divinity School, the University of Virginia, and Yale Law School. While earning his JD at Yale, he was a Coker Fellow, Legal History Fellow, and served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. Before attending law school, Isaac was an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Virginia, where he also completed his MA and PhD in Religious Studies. His first book, American Quaker Resistance to War, 1917–1973: Law, Politics, and Conscience (Brill, 2022), examines conscientious objection in wartime. His second book, God-Optional Religion in Twentieth-Century America: Quakers, Unitarians, Reconstructionist Jews, and the Crisis Over Theism (Oxford University Press, 2023), analyzes the shifting theological landscape of American religion and its implications for law and culture.
He can be reached at Isaac(dot)May(at)Yale(dot)edu.