Amy Kapczynski is the John Thomas Smith Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Faculty Director of the Law and Political Economy Project, and Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. She joined the Yale Law School faculty in 2012 after serving as Assistant Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law from 2007 to 2011. Prior to her academic career, Kapczynski clerked for Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005-2006 and for Judge Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2003-2004. Her educational background includes an A.B. summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1996 with a certificate in Women’s Studies, an M.Phil. with distinction from the University of Cambridge in 1997, an M.A. with distinction from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London in 1998, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 2003, where she was Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal and co-founder of the Yale AIDS Network.

Kapczynski’s scholarship investigates how law shapes and is shaped by political economy, spanning intellectual property law, health, international law, constitutional law, health justice, technology, and democratic theory. Notable publications include the edited volume Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property (Zone Press, 2010, with Gaëlle Krikorian); "Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis," 129 Yale Law Journal 1784 (2020, with Jedediah Britton-Purdy, David Singh Grewal, and K. Sabeel Rahman); "The Law of Informational Capitalism," 129 Yale Law Journal 1276 (2020); "The Public’s Secrets: The Law and Political Economy of Trade Secrets," 55 U.C. Davis Law Review 1367 (2022); and "The Political Economy of Market Power in Pharmaceuticals," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (2023). She edited Rethinking Law (MIT Press, 2022) and has published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Review, and Health Affairs. Kapczynski has testified before state and federal legislatures, collaborated with social movements on global access to medicines, co-founded the Law and Political Economy blog where she serves on the editorial board, and co-led the Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency. In 2022, she received the Yale Law Women Faculty Excellence Award for her teaching, which includes courses on Intellectual Property Law, Law and Political Economy, and the Health and Justice Practicum.

Professional Email: amy.kapczynski@yale.edu