Ganesh Sitaraman, professor of law, has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute. ALI is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize and otherwise improve the law.
Its members, who include practitioners and academics, apply their areas of expertise to ALI projects, which include Restatements of the Law, model statutes and principles of the law. These publications are influential in American courts and state legislatures and in legal scholarship and education. “ALI allows leading scholars in all areas of the law to apply their research to improving law and policies,” said Associate Dean for Research Jim Rossi. “Ganesh’s work, which includes thoughtful policy proposals aimed at promoting democracy, make him a valuable addition to this prestigious organization.”
Sitaraman’s current research addresses issues in constitutional, administrative and foreign relations law. He is the author of The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America (Basic Books, 2019); The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality, coauthored with Anne Alstott (Harvard, 2019); The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution (Knopf, 2017), which was named one of the New York Times‘ 100 notable books of 2017; and The Counterinsurgent‘s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars (Oxford University Press, 2012), which was awarded the 2013 Palmer Prize for Civil Liberties.
Sitaraman was on leave from the Vanderbilt law faculty from 2011 to 2013, serving as policy director for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., during her senatorial campaign and then as her senior counsel in the Senate. Before joining the Vanderbilt law faculty in 2011, he was a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and the Public Law Fellow and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. He has also been a research fellow at the Counterinsurgency Training Center – Afghanistan in Kabul.
An Eagle Scout and a Truman Scholar, Sitaraman earned his A.B. in government magna cum laude at Harvard, a master‘s degree in political thought from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Sitaraman is one of 13 current Vanderbilt Law faculty members who are ALI members. Others include Brian Fitzpatrick, Tracey George, Daniel Gervais, Dean Chris Guthrie, Nancy King, Timothy Meyer, J.B. Ruhl, Jeffrey Schoenblum, Sean Seymore, Suzanna Sherry, Chris Slobogin and Ingrid Wuerth.
