The Indian American Constitutional Heavyweight: How Critics Are Weighing Akhil Reed Amar’s Magnum Opus ‘Born Equal’

When Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar set out to write a three-volume constitutional history of America, he knew he was embarking on an ambitious journey. The 64-year-old Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science has spent nearly four decades at Yale, joining the faculty in 1985 at the remarkably young age of 26 after clerking for then-Judge Stephen Breyer and graduating summa cum laude from Yale College in 1980 and Yale Law School in 1984. But even he seems to acknowledge the enormity of his latest installment, opening “Born Equal” with the self-aware quip: “For what it’s worth, this book is shorter than my last one.”

At 736 pages, “Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840–1920” is still a doorstop of a book that traces America’s tumultuous relationship with the principle that “all men are created equal” from the antebellum period through women’s suffrage. As the second volume in Amar’s planned trilogy hits bookstores, critics are grappling with both the scope of his achievement and the weight of his prose.

The critical reception reveals a work that commands respect for its scholarship while testing readers’ patience with its presentation. Writing in The New York Times, Jeff Shesol acknowledges that the book is “learned and long but never dry” and praises Amar’s expertise in untangling constitutional arguments, particularly his treatment of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

But there’s a catch. “There is a feeling throughout of the lecturer playing to the back of the hall,” the Times review notes, describing a book “awash in asides, anachronisms” and casual references that transform the Emancipation Proclamation into “Abe’s act” and the Seneca Falls declaration into “Elizabeth’s Declaration.” The word “meme” appears frequently throughout a book about 19th-century constitutional development.

It’s a critique that gets to the heart of a challenge facing academic historians who want to reach general audiences: How do you make weighty scholarship accessible without sacrificing gravitas?

The Originalism Wars

Beyond style complaints lies a more fundamental disagreement about Amar’s theoretical approach. The constitutional scholar, who holds the rare distinction of being Yale’s only currently active professor to have won the university’s unofficial “triple crown” — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service — has long championed “liberal originalism.” Liberal originalism is the idea that the Constitution’s original meaning often points toward progressive results, contrary to the conservative originalists who dominate the Supreme Court.

“Born Equal” makes this case by arguing that 19th-century America was “unabashedly originalist,” reverential toward its “founding men and founding texts.” Amar supports this with what he calls “a blizzard of data points,” including the fact that early presidents like William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor were generals like Washington, that countless places were named after founders, and that “America’s first two postage stamps bore the likenesses of Washington and Franklin.”

Shesol pushes back hard on this framework, arguing that Amar “refashions a story of constitutional upheaval as a parable of consistency” and that calling Lincoln “his generation’s best originalist” sells short “the radicalism of his achievement.” This criticism strikes at the heart of current constitutional debates about whether original meaning can guide modern interpretation.

A Long Arc Toward Justice

Not all critics share these concerns. Kirkus Reviews offers a more favorable assessment, describing the work as “a pointed, closely argued study of the long historical arc leading to civil equality for all.” This reviewer appreciates Amar’s comprehensive approach and his connection of historical constitutional corruption to contemporary issues.

Reviewers consistently praise Amar’s expertise and his ability to make constitutional concepts accessible, but they also note that the book suffers from its author’s tendency toward verbosity and digression.

Kirkus particularly praises Amar’s analysis of how “amendments designed to smash slavocrats were twisted like pretzels into political and judicial doctrines designed to protect plutocrats” – a line that demonstrates both Amar’s colorful writing style and his ability to draw connections between past and present constitutional struggles.

The review also commends Amar’s attention to the limitations of progress, noting how he shows that civil rights didn’t extend to women or Indigenous people even after Black men gained political rights, because “woman suffrage would not solve any immediate problem faced by these men.”

Academic Praise Meets Popular Challenges

The tension between scholarly acclaim and popular accessibility runs throughout the critical reception. Amar, whose work has earned awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society — a rare bipartisan achievement in today’s polarized legal landscape — faces the perpetual challenge of academic writers seeking broader audiences. Academic endorsers heap praise on the work – Jonathan Eig calls Amar “one of our most prodigious constitutional scholars,” while Bancroft Prize winner Mary Sarah Bilder praises his “deep conviction and engaging narrative flair.”

Publishers Weekly splits the difference with a concise but positive assessment, describing an “elegantly written and thorough survey of America’s second founding” that tracks constitutional evolution “from the heights of ‘slavocracy’ in the 1840s and ’50s through women winning the right to vote in 1920.”

But even supportive reviews acknowledge the book’s unwieldy nature. Kirkus notes that Amar himself seems aware of the sprawling scope, while the Times observes that the book is “digressive to a degree that the first volume, an even longer book, was not.”

Constitutional History in a Polarized Moment

The book’s reception comes at a time when constitutional interpretation has become increasingly polarized, with originalism dominating conservative legal thought while progressives search for alternative approaches. Amar’s liberal originalism offers a middle path, but critics question whether his insistence on constitutional consistency understates the radical nature of change during the Civil War era.

Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen’s endorsement highlights this contemporary relevance, suggesting the book should “galvanize all readers” by connecting historical struggles to “present-day realities.” It’s a reminder that constitutional history isn’t just academic exercise – it’s ammunition in ongoing political battles.

The Verdict from the Literary Trenches

The emerging critical consensus suggests that “Born Equal” succeeds as a work of scholarship while struggling as a work of narrative history. Reviewers consistently praise Amar’s expertise and his ability to make constitutional concepts accessible, but they also note that the book suffers from its author’s tendency toward verbosity and digression.

The most substantive criticism challenges whether Amar’s framework captures the true radicalism of constitutional transformation during this period. As the Times reviewer puts it, what Lincoln understood was that equality “demanded more than obeisance to words on parchment. It required reconception.”

For readers willing to wade through 736 pages of constitutional analysis peppered with contemporary references, the reviews suggest they’ll find valuable insights about America’s ongoing struggle with equality. Whether they’ll find an elegant narrative is another question entirely.

As Amar prepares his third and final volume, covering the period from 1920 to the present, the critical reception of “Born Equal” offers both encouragement and warning. His scholarship commands respect, but his presentation style may need tightening if he wants to reach the broad audience that his important arguments deserve.

The constitutional challenges Amar chronicles – the gap between founding ideals and lived reality, the struggle to extend equality to all Americans, the corruption of noble intentions – remain painfully relevant. Whether his particular approach to telling that story will endure may depend on future scholars’ ability to distill his insights into more digestible form.

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.