Stephen E. Sachs

Stephen Edward Sachs (born 1979 or 1980)^[1] is an American legal scholar who is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.^[2] He is a scholar of constitutional law, civil procedure, conflict of laws, and originalism.^[3][4]

Stephen E. Sachs
Sachs in 2025
Born	1979 or 1980 (age 44–45) New York, U.S.
Education	Harvard University (BA) Merton College, Oxford (MA) Yale University (JD)
Title	Antonin Scalia Professor of Law
Spouse	Amanda Schwoerke ​ (m. 2008)​
Awards	Joseph Story Award (2020)
Academic work
Discipline	Constitutional law
Institutions	Duke University University of Chicago Harvard University

Early life and education

Sachs was born in New York to a Jewish family.^[5] He is the son of Alan A. Sachs, a lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri, who was a student of Charles Fried and a graduate of Harvard Law School, and Marilyn M. Sachs, a scholar of French literature.^[6] In 1985, Sachs' family moved to St. Louis, where he later graduated from Clayton High School in Clayton, Missouri, in 1998.^[7] After high school, Sachs attended Harvard University, where he was as a resident in Quincy House and served as the editorial chairman of The Harvard Crimson.^[8]

As an undergraduate, Sachs studied under law professor Charles Donahue and cross-enrolled at Harvard Law School.^[3] In 2002, he graduated summa cum laude and first in his class from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts specializing in medieval history with membership in Phi Beta Kappa.^[9] For achieving the highest undergraduate grade point average at Harvard, he was awarded the university's Sophia Freund Prize.^[10] His senior thesis, "The 'Law Merchant' and the Fair Court of St. Ives, 1270-1324," was supervised by medievalist Thomas N. Bisson and earned him the university's Thomas T. Hoopes Prize and Philip Washburn Prize for outstanding scholarly work.^[11]

After graduating from Harvard, Sachs was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study in England at the University of Oxford. As a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a first class degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Merton College in 2004 which was promoted in June 2008.^[2] He then entered Yale Law School, where he became the executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and the executive editor and articles editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. He won the law school's Joseph Parker Prize for legal history and its Jewell Prize for contributions to a secondary journal before receiving his Juris Doctor (J.D.) in 2007.^[11]

Career

From 2007 to 2008, Sachs served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, then entered private practice at the law firm of Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C., as an associate attorney in appellate litigation. From 2009 to 2010, he clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts at the U.S. Supreme Court.^[2]

In 2011, Sachs became an assistant professor at the Duke University School of Law. He was appointed as an associate professor in 2014 then was elevated to a full-time professorship in 2016 with tenure. He assumed the law school's appointment as its Colin W. Brown Professor of Law in 2020.^[2][12] On July 1, 2021, he moved to Harvard Law School to serve as its inaugural Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, a position established in 2017.^[3][13] Harvard president Alan Garber appointed Sachs in 2024 to an advisory committee of twelve Harvard Law faculty members in order to determine the next Dean of Harvard Law School.^[14]

Sachs is an elected member of the American Law Institute.^[15][16] On March 14, 2020, he was awarded the Joseph Story Award of the Federalist Society.^[10] During the winter of that same year, he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School.^[17]

Personal life

Sachs is a resident of Massachusetts and has also lived in England, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Virginia.^[5] He married Amanda Schwoerke, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College whom he met while she was also a student at Yale Law School, on August 24, 2008.^[1] They have two daughters: Elizabeth and Clara.^[7]

See also

• William Baude
• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Chief Justice)

Selected publications

• Sachs, Stephen E. (2005). "From St. Ives to Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion of the Medieval 'Law Merchant'". American University International Law Review. 21 (5): 685–812. SSRN 830265.
• Sachs, Stephen E. (February 23, 2012). "The Uneasy Case for the Affordable Care Act". Law & Contemporary Problems. 75 (3). Duke University School of Law: 17–27. JSTOR 23216716. SSRN 2009957.
• Sachs, Stephen E. (April 16, 2015). "Originalism as a Theory of Legal Change". Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. 38 (3): 817–888. SSRN 2498838.
• Sachs, Stephen E.; Baude, William (November 22, 2016). "Originalism's Bite". The Green Bag. Micro-Symposium: Richard Posner's 'What is Obviously Wrong with the Federal Judiciary'. 20: 103–108. SSRN 2874437.
• Sachs, Stephen E.; Baude, William (February 10, 2017). "The Law of Interpretation". Harvard Law Review. 130 (4): 1079–1147. JSTOR 44865509. SSRN 2783398.
• Sachs, Stephen E. (October 2017). "Originalism Without Text" (PDF). The Yale Law Journal. 127 (1): 156–168. JSTOR 45222567.
• Sachs, Stephen E. (March 11, 2018). "Finding Law". California Law Review. Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory. 107: 527–581. SSRN 3064443.
• Sachs, Stephen E.; Baude, William (October 8, 2019). "The Misunderstood Eleventh Amendment". University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory. 169 (3): 609–663. SSRN 3466298.
• Sachs, Stephen E. (March 25, 2021). "Originalism: Standard and Procedure". Harvard Law Review. Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory. 135: 777–830. SSRN 3812715.
• Sachs, Stephen E.; Baude, William (August 15, 2022). "The 'Common-Good' Manifesto". Harvard Law Review. 136 (3): 861–906. SSRN 4190445.
• Sachs, Stephen E. (January 23, 2023). "Law Within Limits: Judge Williams and the Constitution" (PDF). New York University Journal of Law & Liberty. 16 (1): 110–144. SSRN 4378379.