Owen M. Fiss (born 1938) is an American professor who is a
Sterling Professor
Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a tenured faculty member considered the best in his or her field. It is akin to the rank of university professor at other universities.
The appointment, made by the ...
emeritus at
Yale Law School
Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by ''U ...
.
Biography
Born in the
Bronx, N.Y., Fiss received his
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
degree from
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
in 1959,
B.Phil.
Bachelor of Philosophy (BPhil, BPh, or PhB; la, Baccalaureus Philosophiae or ) is the title of an academic degree that usually involves considerable research, either through a thesis or supervised research projects. Unlike many other bachelor's d ...
from
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
in 1961, and
LL.B.
Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Chi ...
from
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
Each class ...
in 1964.
After graduation from law school, Fiss was admitted to the bar in
New York state
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...
in 1965. He clerked for
U.S. Court of Appeals
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary. The courts of appeals are divided into 11 numbered circuits that cover geographic areas of the United States and hear appeals fr ...
Judge
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...
from 1964 to 1965, and for
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
Justice
William Brennan in 1965. He then worked as a Special Assistant to Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division of the
Department of Justice
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
from 1966 to 1968.
Fiss joined the faculty of
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
in 1968, and became a professor at Yale Law School in 1976.
Courses offered by Fiss include
civil procedure
Civil procedure is the body of law that sets out the rules and standards that courts follow when adjudicating civil lawsuits (as opposed to procedures in criminal law matters). These rules govern how a lawsuit or case may be commenced; what ki ...
, distributive justice, the law of
democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...
and the
First Amendment
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
.
Brian Leiter
Brian Leiter (; born 1963) is an American philosopher and legal scholar who is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and founder and Director of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values. ...
's law school ratings rank Owen Fiss as one of the top 20 most-cited professors in constitutional law.
Campaign finance reform
Fiss is an advocate of strong regulation of political campaigns:
We may sometimes find it necessary to "restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others," and that unless the upremeCourt allows, and sometimes even requires the state to do so, we as a people will never truly be free.Bradley A. Smith, "The Myth of Campaign Finance Reform", ''National Affairs'', Winter 2010
/ref>
Works
* ''The Civil Rights Injunction'', 1978
* ''Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, 1888-1910'', 1993
* ''Liberalism Divided'', 1996
* ''The Irony of Free Speech'', 1996
* ''A Community of Equals'', 1999
* ''A Way Out: America's Ghettos and the Legacy of Racism'', 2003
* ''The Law As It Could Be'', 2003
* ''A War Like No Other: The Constitution in a Time of Terror'', 2015
* ''Pillars of Justice'', 2017
See also
*
References
External links
Fiss's profile at Yale Law School
1938 births
Living people
People from the Bronx
Dartmouth College alumni
Harvard Law School alumni
Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
Yale Law School faculty
Yale Sterling Professors
American legal scholars
{{US-legal-academic-bio-stub