Rate My Professor Amanda Shanor

Amanda Shanor is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches and writes about constitutional law, particularly the freedom of speech. Shanor’s research explores the changing meaning of the First Amendment and the forces that affect it; democratic theory, illiberalism, and equality; and the intersection of constitutional law and economic life. Prior to joining the academy, Shanor was a practicing lawyer in the National Legal Department of the American Civil Liberties Union who worked on the organization’s Supreme Court litigation and national strategy. This included Masterpiece Cakeshop, a case involving a bakery that declined to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple. Shanor was previously a fellow at Georgetown University Law Center’s Center on National Security & the Law who litigated constitutional and national security cases including Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder. Shanor’s scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, the Emory Law Review, the Wisconsin Law Review, the Harvard Law Review Forum, and the Yale Law Journal Forum, among others. Shanor is a regular contributor to legal blogs, including SCOTUSBlog, and is the co-author of a textbook on counterterrorism law. Shanor teaches first-year Constitutional Law at Penn Law and has also taught at Yale and Georgetown law schools. While an academic, Shanor has continued to litigate, file amicus briefs, and advise and moot advocates on speech, equality, and other constitutional issues, including in 303 Creative v. Elenis, Bostock v. Clayton County, the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rule, and social media regulation. Shanor is a graduate of Yale Law School and Yale College and holds a PhD in law from Yale University. Shanor served as a law clerk to Judges Cornelia T.L. Pillard and Judith W. Rogers on the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Robert W. Sweet in the Southern District of New York.

Shanor is also the Wolpow Family Faculty Scholar at the Wharton School. Her recent publications include Greenwashing and the First Amendment, co-authored with Sarah E. Light and published in the Columbia Law Review in 2022, and Corporate Political Power: The Politics of Reputation and Traceability, co-authored with Mary-Hunter McDonnell and Timothy Werner and published in the Emory Law Journal in 2021.