Stephen E. Sachs

Stephen Edward Sachs (born 1979 or 1980) is an American legal scholar who is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is a scholar of constitutional law, civil procedure, conflict of laws, and originalism.

Early life and education Sachs was born in New York to a Jewish family. He is the son of Alan A. Sachs, a lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri, who was a student of Charles Fried and a graduate of Harvard Law School, and Marilyn M. Sachs, a scholar of French literature. In 1985, Sachs' family moved to St. Louis, where he graduated from Clayton High School in Clayton, Missouri, in 1998. After high school, Sachs attended Harvard University, where he was a resident in Quincy House and served as the editorial chairman of The Harvard Crimson.

As an undergraduate, Sachs studied under law professor Charles Donahue and cross-enrolled at Harvard Law School. For achieving the highest undergraduate grade point average at Harvard, he was awarded the university's Sophia Freund Prize. His senior thesis, "The 'Law Merchant' and the Fair Court of St. Ives, 1270-1324," was supervised by medievalist Thomas N. Bisson and earned him the university's Thomas T. Hoopes Prize and Philip Washburn Prize for outstanding scholarly work.

Career From 2007 to 2008, Sachs served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, then entered private practice at the law firm of Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C., as an associate attorney in appellate litigation. From 2009 to 2010, he clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts at the U.S. Supreme Court. On July 1, 2021, he moved to Harvard Law School to serve as its inaugural Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, a position established in 2017. Harvard president Alan Garber appointed Sachs in 2024 to an advisory committee of twelve Harvard Law faculty members in order to determine the next Dean of Harvard Law School.

Sachs is an elected member of the American Law Institute. On March 14, 2020, he was awarded the Joseph Story Award of the Federalist Society.

Personal life Sachs is a resident of Massachusetts and has also lived in England, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Virginia. He married Amanda Schwoerke, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College whom he met while she was also a student at Yale Law School, on August 24, 2008. They have two daughters: Elizabeth and Clara.

Selected publications