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]

Sachs was born in New York and is Jewish.^[5] He is the son of Alan A. Sachs, a lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri, and Marilyn M. Sachs, a scholar of French literature. Sachs's father graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was a student of Charles Fried.^[6] Sachs' family moved to St. Louis in 1985 and he was raised there, attending Clayton High School in Clayton, Missouri.^[7]

After high school, Sachs was educated at Harvard University, where he was as an undergraduate in Quincy House and wrote for The Harvard Crimson.^[3][8] In 2002, Sachs graduated first in his class from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts specializing in medieval history, summa cum laude. For his academic achievements, he was awarded the university's Sophia Freund Prize.^[9][7] Sach's undergraduate thesis, "The 'Law Merchant' and the Fair Court of St. Ives, 1270-1324", earned him the university's Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarly work.^[10] He was a student of medievalist Thomas N. Bisson.

After graduating, Sachs received a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a first class degree in philosophy, politics and economics in 2004 which was promoted in June 2008.^[11][2] He then enrolled at Yale Law School, where he became an editor of both the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Law & Policy Review. Sachs was awarded the law school's Joseph Parker Prize for legal history and its Jewell Prize for contributions to a secondary journal before graduating in 2007.^[10]

Sachs clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2007 to 2008, then entered private practice at the law firm of Mayer Brown as an associate. He left the law firm to clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts from 2009 until 2010, returning to Mayer Brown after the clerkship.^[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, assuming 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]

Sachs is an elected member of the American Law Institute.^[14][15] On March 14, 2020, he was awarded the Joseph Story Award of the Federalist Society.^[9] During the winter of that same year, he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School.^[16]

Sachs is a citizen 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]

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

• 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.

• Curriculum Vitae
• Page at the Yale Law Journal
• Page at the Federalist Society