Samuel L. Bray
Professor of Law
Office: 1116 Eck Hall of Law
Phone: 574-631-2306
Email: sbray@nd.edu
Staff Assistant: Kristina Kusisto
SSRN: View
Professor Samuel L. Bray joined the Notre Dame Law School faculty in 2018. His primary areas of research are remedies and equity. His recent work includes “Getting into Equity,” Notre Dame Law Review (forthcoming 2022) (with Paul B. Miller); “Debs and Federal Equity Jurisdiction,” Notre Dame Law Review (forthcoming 2022) (with Aditya Bamzai); “Equity, Law, and the Seventh Amendment,” 100 Texas Law Review 467-517 (2022); “The Mischief Rule,” 109 Georgetown Law Journal 967 (2021); and “Against Fiduciary Constitutionalism,” 106 Virginia Law Review 1479 (2020) (with Paul B. Miller); as well as chapters in the following books: Oxford Handbook of Christianity and the Law (forthcoming 2022); Oxford Handbook of New Private Law (2021); Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Equity (2020); Equity and Law: Fusion and Fission (2019); and Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law (2019). His books, with various coauthors, include four editions of The Constitution of the United States; two editions of Ames, Chafee, and Re on Remedies; Genesis 1-11: A New Old Translation for Readers, Scholars, and Translators; and The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition. Bray is a faculty fellow of the Notre Dame Program on Private Law, a faculty fellow of the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Initiative, and a McDonald Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. He is an adviser on the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Remedies, and is a member of the Advisory Committee for Rules of Procedure for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Judiciary Committee, and the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Bray is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, and he clerked for then-Judge Michael W. McConnell on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. After clerking, he practiced law at Mayer Brown LLP, was an associate-in-law at Columbia Law School, and was executive director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. Bray was an assistant professor of law at UCLA from 2011 to 2016, and a professor of law from 2016 to 2018, and during the 2016-2017 academic year he was a Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas-Austin.
Courses Taught
LAW70203, Remedies
LAW60308, Civil Procedure
LAW60906, Property
LAW60307, Constitutional Law
Scholarship
Articles and Essays
“Equity, Law, and the Seventh Amendment,” Texas Law Review (forthcoming 2021)
“The Mischief Rule,” 109 Georgetown Law Journal 967 (2021)
“Remedies,” in Oxford Handbook of New Private Law (Andrew Gold, John C.P. Goldberg, Daniel B. Kelly, Emily L. Sherwin, and Henry E. Smith eds., 2021), 563-573
“Against Fiduciary Constitutionalism,” 106 Virginia Law Review 1479-1532 (2020) (with Paul B. Miller)
“A Parsimonious Equity?: Discussion of Equity: Conscience Goes to Market,” 21 Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 1-10 (2020)
“Form and Substance in the Fusion of Law and Equity” in Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Equity (Dennis Klimchuck, Irit Samet, and Henry Smith eds., 2020), 231-239
“The Parable of the Forms,” 93 St. John’s Law Review 623-626 (2020)
“Equity: Notes on the American Reception,” in Equity and Law: Fusion and Fission (John C. P. Goldberg, Henry E. Smith, and P. G. Turner eds., 2019), 31-45
“Fiduciary Remedies,” in Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law (Evan J. Criddle, Paul B. Miller, and Robert H. Sitkoff eds., 2019), 449-467
“Foreword: The Future of Qualified Immunity,” 93 Notre Dame Law Review 1793-1796 (2018)
“Punitive Damages Against Trustees?,” in Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law (D. Gordon Smith and Andrew S. Gold eds., 2018), 201–217
“Remedies, Meet Economics; Economics, Meet Remedies,” 38 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 71–89 (2018)
“Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction,” 131 Harvard Law Review 417-482 (2017)
“‘Necessary AND Proper’ and ‘Cruel AND Unusual’: Hendiadys in the Constitution,” 102 Virginia Law Review 687-764 (2016)
“The System of Equitable Remedies,” 63 UCLA Law Review 530-593 (2016)
“The Supreme Court and the New Equity,” 68 Vanderbilt Law Review 997 (2015)
“On Doctrines that Do Many Things,” 18 Green Bag 2d 141 (2015)
“A Little Bit of Laches Goes a Long Way: Notes on Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.,” 67 Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc 1 (2014)
“The Myth of the Mild Declaratory Judgment,” 63 Duke Law Journal 1091 (2014)
“Announcing Remedies,” 97 Cornell Law Review 753 (2012)
“Preventive Adjudication,” 77 University of Chicago Law Review 1275 (2010)
“Power Rules,” 110 Columbia Law Review 1172 (2010)
“Rooker Feldman (1923–2006),” 9 Green Bag 2d 317 (2006)
Comment, “Not Proven: Introducing a Third Verdict,” 72 University of Chicago Law Review 1299 (2005)
Books
Ames, Chafee, and Re on Remedies (with Emily Sherwin) (2d ed. 2018; 3d ed. 2019)
Genesis 1–11: A New Old Translation for Readers, Scholars, and Translators (with John F. Hobbins) (2017) (reviews: Association of Jewish Libraries, Expository Times, Interpreter, Journal for Study of the Old Testament, Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, New Blackfriars, Themelios)
The Constitution of the United States (with Michael Stokes Paulsen, Steven Gow Calabresi, Michael W. McConnell, and William Baude) (1st ed. 2010; 2nd ed. 2013; 3rd ed. 2016; 4th ed. 2021)
Areas of Expertise
- Constitutional Law
- Equity
- Law & Literature
- Law & Religion
- Remedies
In the News
Sens. Invite Justices To Rule On National Injunctions, Law360, February 25, 2020
Rule by District Judge: The Challenges of Universal Injunctions (Senate Judiciary Committee testimony), February 25, 2020
Democrats need to listen to Neil Gorsuch's surprisingly good idea, Vox, January 29, 2020
Professor Samuel Bray cited by Justice Gorsuch in recent opinion, Notre Dame Law School News, January 29, 2020
Review of "Genesis 1-11: A New Old Translation for Readers, Scholars, and Translators," Review of Biblical Literature, January 16, 2020
A Response to The Lost History of the 'Universal' Injunction (guest blog for Notice & Comment), Yale Journal on Regulation, October 18, 2019
High Court Must Define Meaning of Silence in Debt Collection Case, Bloomberg Law, October 16, 2019
Argument preview: A conflict between plain text and background rules, SCOTUS Blog, October 10, 2019
Overruling its own precedent, 7th Circuit curbs FTC's ability to obtain restitution, ABA Journal, August 23, 2019
Trump administration lawyers rush cases to the Supreme Court, and blame blue-state federal judges, Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2018
Judges Shouldn't Have the Power to Halt Laws Nationwide, The Atlantic, October 31, 2018
Nationwide Injunctions: Judicial Authority in the Federal Courts, The Federalist Society, August 1, 2018
When District Judges Try to Run the Country, The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2018
ACLU family separation case highlights alternate path for Trump challengers, Reuters, June 27, 2018
Samuel Bray to join Notre Dame Law School faculty, Notre Dame Law School News, January 31, 2018
Professor Samuel Bray speaks to House Judiciary members about nationwide injunctions, Notre Dame Law School News, December 4, 2017