Samuel Issacharoff
Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law
Samuel Issacharoff is the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1983 and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He pioneered the law of the political process as an academic field through his acclaimed casebook The Law of Democracy, co-authored with Pamela Karlan and Richard Pildes. Before NYU, he held the Jamail Chair at the University of Texas and was the Harold Medina Professor at Columbia Law School. His work has helped shape modern understandings of class actions, voting rights, and democratic institutions.
Teaching Style
Professor Issacharoff is a commanding and charismatic Socratic teacher who uses cold calls to push students through intricate procedural and constitutional puzzles at a brisk pace. He is known for long, probing Socratic dialogues that can last an entire class period, following one student's reasoning to its logical extremes. His teaching combines theoretical rigor with a practitioner's understanding of how litigation and elections actually work.
Cold Call Tips
- 1Know the procedural rules inside and out — Issacharoff expects fluency with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and key jurisdictional doctrines
- 2Be prepared for extended cold-call sequences; he may stay with you for 15-20 minutes, so have deep understanding of the material
- 3Understand the policy rationales behind procedural rules, especially regarding efficiency, access to justice, and aggregate litigation
- 4For election law, know the major Voting Rights Act cases and be ready to discuss how institutional design shapes democratic outcomes
Areas of Expertise
Education
- J.D., Yale Law School
- B.A., University of Texas at Austin
Notable Publications
- The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (casebook, with Karlan and Pildes)
- Civil Procedure (casebook)
- Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts (2015)
Research Interests
More Professors at NYU School of Law
Constitutional Law, Antidiscrimination Law, Law and Literature
Criminal Law, Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Sentencing
Constitutional Law, Family Law, Criminal Law, Reproductive Rights
Constitutional Law, Election Law, Voting Rights, Separation of Powers
Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, Federal Courts, Policing
Criminal Law, Racial Justice and the Law, Eighth Amendment, Capital Punishment