Education

• JD, Harvard Law School, 2016
• BA, Duke University, 2013

Biography

Michael Elias Shammas is a Forrester Fellow at Tulane Law School.  Shammas’s research focuses on issues concerning access to justice, especially as they relate to protecting the Seventh Amendment’s eroding guarantee of a civil jury trial.  He is interested in how the intersection of political psychology, history, constitutional law, and legal philosophy can be used modernize institutions such as juries (criminal and civil) in order to reinvigorate American liberal democracy. 

Prior to joining Tulane Law School, Shammas practiced as a litigator for two years at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison, LLP.  From 2018-2019, he clerked for the Hon. D. Brock Hornby on the United States District Court for the District of Maine. After completing a research fellowship at the NYU School of Law’s Civil Jury Project in fall 2020, he clerked for the Hon. Ronald L. Gilman on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Between his clerkships and while at NYU Law School, he practiced law independently, successfully representing clients in pro bono immigration matters as well as employment matters involving withheld wages.

Aside from his scholarly writing, Shammas has both edited or written for publications ranging from the Harvard Law Record, the country’s oldest law-student run student newspaper, to the Huffington Post.