David A. Strauss

David A. Strauss is an American legal scholar who is the former Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a constitutional law scholar and the author of The Living Constitution, an influential work on the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States and judicial decision-making. He has argued 19 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Education and career

Strauss graduated from Harvard College with an A.B., summa cum laude, in 1973. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, on a Marshall Scholarship and received a B.Phil. in politics in 1975. In 1978, he graduated with a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was developments editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Strauss joined the University of Chicago Law School faculty in 1985. He has published numerous articles on a variety of subjects, principally in constitutional law and related areas, and two books: The Living Constitution (2010) and Democracy and Equality: The Enduring Constitutional Vision of the Warren Court (2019) (with fellow Chicago professor Geoffrey R. Stone).