Professor Akhil Reed Amar Offers Historical Narrative of Constitutional Equality in America

“Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840–1920,” the latest book by Akhil Reed Amar ’84, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, recounts the dramatic constitutional debates that were taking place during the 80 years that followed the Civil War. Through those debates, especially surrounding racial and gender equality, Amar offers a historical narrative that intertwines legal and political analysis. 

“What kind of new nation had Americans brought forth, and what kind of more mature nation did they want to bequeath? What did America’s Constitution already mean, and what more (or less) should it mean? And what — concretely, precisely — would Americans be agreeing to if they accepted, as the very cornerstone of the American constitutional project, the proposition that ‘all men are created equal’?” writes Amar. 

The book is the second volume of Amar’s trilogy on American constitutional history. The first book in the series, “The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760–1840,” was published in May 2021. This latest installment aims to show readers how — thanks to the active and involved work of American citizens of this time, namely Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln — the Constitution continued to evolve. 

“In myriad ways large and small, this constitutional dialogue anticipated modern-day originalism, revolving as it did around emphatic, reverential, and often empirically testable claims (some true, some false) about the founding and about what the founding ‘fathers’ said and did and meant,” writes Amar. 

This constitutional dialogue led to the creation of four new amendments during the Reconstruction era centered around the premise that all citizens were born equal and should be ensured the same rights and protections regardless of race or gender — the abolishment of slavery and guaranteed citizenship and suffrage for Black people and women. 

Though written for a general audience, Amar imagined judges, legal professionals, and students as readers for this work. For those who practice law, he hopes the book will offer a much deeper, conceptual understanding of the Constitution and its intended purpose, and they will implement its analytic framework in their daily professional practice. Amar gives the general reader a historical examination of the U.S. Constitution during a specific period, underscoring the inspirational aspects of the nation’s history in its pursuit of equality while not whitewashing its past. 

Amar is a constitutional law expert and scholar whose work has been widely cited in books, scholarly articles, and Supreme Court cases. He holds awards from the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic, and he is the author of more than 100 law review articles and several award-winning, critically acclaimed books. In addition to his position at Yale, he is the co-host of a weekly podcast, “Amarica’s Constitution,” and co-writes a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court for SCOTUSblog.