Kurt T. Lash has been elected to the American Law Institute (ALI). Founded in 1923, ALI is the preeminent scholarly organization in the United States dedicated to clarifying, modernizing, and improving the law. Lash is one of 61 newly elected members, who include prominent judges, lawyers, and law professors.

“Kurt Lash’s scholarship is very innovative and influential," praised Dean Vikram Amar. “I have no doubt that he will make important contributions to the work of ALI, and I welcome him as a fellow member.”

Lash joins 11 other Illinois faculty who are members of ALI, including Dean Vikram Amar, Ralph Brubaker, John Colombo, Matthew Finkin, David Hyman, Richard Kaplan, Robert Lawless, Andrew Leipold, Jason Mazzone, Charles Tabb, and Robin Wilson. 

One of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law, Lash is the Guy Raymond Jones Chair in Law and the co-director of the College’s Program in Constitutional Theory, History, and Law. His work has been published in some of the top law reviews in the United States and has been cited by state and federal appellate courts, including the Supreme Court. He has written numerous articles and books on the Constitution and American history, including his recent book, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship, which was acclaimed as “a deep and important book [that] will surely revolutionize our understanding of the original public meaning of the enigmatic "privileges or immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

A graduate of Yale Law School, Lash served as law clerk to the Honorable Robert R. Beezer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He joined Illinois Law in 2012 from Loyola Law School Los Angeles, where he served as the James P. Bradley Chair of Constitutional Law.