The U.S. Constitution

“At long last, we have an annotated and explanatory guide to our Constitution that ordinary people, lawyers, and democracy advocates can understand. Constitutional law scholar Melissa Murray does the hard work of distilling the meaning of our Constitution into a book that should be in every home library, on every desk, and in every school. This is a critical work for our time.”—Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel Emeritus, The Legal Defense Fund “With this timely and readable annotated Constitution, Prof. Melissa Murray has yet again done what she does best: Locating current disputes over constitutional powers, authority and limits within her expansive knowledge of history, caselaw, legal movements and daily headlines. Equal parts legal doctrine and owners manual, this deep dive into the founding documents serves as a vital reminder that it is emphatically the province of the people to know what the law is, so that they can defend it and also build it to serve its highest purposes.”—Dahlia Lithwick, author of the New York Times bestseller Lady Justice and host of Amicus “Murray is without peer in her ability to translate the law to a general audience. With this book, Murray convincingly and succinctly explains how under the Constitution, the people are supreme and empowers us all to claim the Constitution as our own, to hold the government to account, and to continue the Constitution’s project of becoming a more perfect Union.”—Leah Litman, author of the New York Times bestseller Lawless “Murray does so much more than annotate the Constitution, she illuminates it, and in the process exposes its dark secrets and hidden myths. She tells us not only what the Constitution says, but what it really means.”—Elie Mystal, Justice Correspondent for The Nation Magazine

Melissa Murray is the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at New York University’s School of Law.

She is the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary and cohost of the top-ranked podcast Strict Scrutiny, which focuses on the Supreme Court and its surrounding legal culture. Murray is also a regular commentator on MSNBC.

Her writing frequently appears in major national publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and The Nation. She is often called upon by national media outlets such as NPR and PBS to provide expert, accessible commentary on Supreme Court decisions and other pressing legal matters of national importance.

Murray’s academic publications have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal.

She is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where she was a Jefferson Scholar and an Echols Scholar, and Yale Law School, where she was notes development editor of the Yale Law Journal. During law school, she was recognized as an NAACP-LDF/Shearman & Sterling Scholar and was a semifinalist in the Morris Tyler Moot Court competition.

Following law school, Murray clerked for Sonia Sotomayor, then of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Stefan Underhill of the US District Court for the District of Connecticut. Before joining NYU, she was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she received the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction. From March 2016 to June 2017, she served as interim dean of Berkeley Law.

Murray is a member of the New York bar and resides in New York City with her family.