Amy Kapczynski

Amy Kapczynski is the John Thomas Smith Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is also the Faculty Director of the Law and Political Economy Project, co-founder and member of the editorial board of the Law and Political Economy blog, and Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. Prior to joining the Yale faculty, she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Kapczynski’s work investigates how law shapes, and is shaped by, political economy. She has written in a wide variety of areas, including IP law, health, international law, and constitutional law. Her recent writing includes "Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the 20th-Century Synthesis," Yale L. J. (2020) (with Jedediah Purdy, David Grewal, and Sabeel Rahman); "The Public’s Secrets: The Law and Political Economy of Trade Secrets," U.C. Davis L. Rev. (2022); "Administering a Democratic Political Economy," Harvard L. & Pol’y Rev. (2024) (with Joel Michaels); and "The Law of Informational Capitalism," Yale L. Rev. (2020). Read more on her scholarship.

Kapczynski has worked closely with social movements involved in campaigns for access to medicines around the world, testified before state and federal legislatures, and written for venues including Boston Review, Democracy, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In 2022 her teaching was recognized with the YLW Faculty Excellence Award at Yale Law School.  

Before teaching, Kapczynski served as a law clerk to Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen G. Breyer at the U.S. Supreme Court, and to Judge Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.