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Austin Sarat

William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science
Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor,
Amherst College
J.D., Yale Law School, 1988
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1973
M.A., University of Wisconsin, 1970
B.A., Providence College, 1969

Professor Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

Sarat is a pioneering figure in the development of legal study in the liberal arts, of the humanistic study of law and of the cultural study of law. He is also an internationally renowned scholar of capital punishment, specializing in efforts to understand its social, political and cultural significance in the United States.

Sarat founded both Amherst College’s Department of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought and the national scholarly association, The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. He is former president of that association and has also served as president of the Law and Society Association and of the Consortium of Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs.

He is author or editor of more than 60 books including "The Killing State: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture," "When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition," "The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives," Law, Violence, and the Possibility of Justice," "Pain, Death, and the Law," "Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution," "When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice," and "Capital Punishment," two volumes.

Other books include "Something to Believe in: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyers" (with Stuart Scheingold); "Cultural Analysis, Cultural Studies and the Law: Moving Beyond Legal Realism" (with Jonathan Simon); "Looking Back at Law's Century" (with Robert Kagan and Bryant Garth); and "The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society."

His most recent book is "The Road to Abolition?" He is currently writing a book entitled "Hollywood's Law: What Movies Do for Democracy." He is editor of the journal "Law, Culture and the Humanities and of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society."

Sarat has received numerous prizes and awards including the Harry Kalven Award given by the Law Society Association for "distinguished research on law and society," the Reginald Heber Smith Award given biennially to honor the best scholarship on "the subject of equal access to justice," the James Boyd White Award from the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, given for distinguished scholarly achievement and “outstanding and innovative” contributions to the humanistic study of law, the Stan Wheeler Prize awarded by the Law & Society Association for distinguished teaching and mentoring of undergraduate, graduate, or professional students working on issues of law and society, and the Hugo Adam Bedau, given to honor significant contributions to death penalty scholarship by the Massachusetts Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

In May 2008, Providence College awarded Sarat an honorary degree in recognition of his pioneering work in the development of legal study in the liberal arts and his distinguished scholarship on capital punishment in the United States.

His public writing has appeared in such places as The Los Angeles Times and The American Prospect, and he has been a commentator or guest on National Public Radio, Public Television’s The News Hour, Odyssey, Democracy Now, ABC World News Tonight, MSNBC, and The O'Reilly Factor.

A profile of him in US News and World Report noted that he is “one of the best loved professors at Amherst College” and praised his teaching for combining “innovation and inspiration.” His teaching also has been featured in The New York Times and on NPR’s Fresh Air and NBC’s The Today Show.

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