Three faculty members joined Minnesota Law this fall, bringing unique perspectives and scholarship in varied fields, including social movements, sentencing theory, and economic statecraft.
While diverse in their areas of expertise, Amna Akbar, Sam Merchant, and Vinita Singh share a similar viewpoint on why they were drawn to Minnesota Law: academic rigor, location, and a culture of collaboration among students and faculty.
“The Law School was very appealing because of its scholarship reputation and the respectful and inquisitive students,” says Singh. Merchant, too, says that in the interviewing process, he found a rare combination of intellectual rigor and friendly students and faculty.
For Akbar, the location is unique. “Some of the most significant racial justice protest and movement building has happened in the Twin Cities,” she says.
Amna A. Akbar
Amna Akbar, Benjamin N. Berger Professor in Criminal Law, has been studying contemporary social movements and the carceral state for more than a decade. She has written on the Black Lives Matter, prison abolition, and defund the police movements for numerous legal and social science journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Harvard Law Review Forum, and California Law Review, as well as the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Dissent.
Akbar comes to Minnesota from the Ohio State University, where she was a professor of law. She also was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, a fellow in the program in law and public affairs at Princeton University, and a visiting senior research scholar at Columbia Law School’s Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. Akbar clerked for Judge Gerard E. Lynch on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and worked as a staff attorney at Queens Legal Service Corp. after earning a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.
Akbar’s scholarship explores law as a dynamic terrain of social, economic, and political contestation. “Historically, law schools and the profession have focused on conflicts adjudicated by judges, with parties represented by lawyers,” she says. “We have understood law as an expert domain isolated from other economic and social questions, but I believe it’s important to understand law as much broader than what happens in court.”
Akbar was raised in a Muslim family and was in her first week of law school when the September 11, 2001, attacks happened. She had entered law school with the intention of becoming a civil rights lawyer, but she said the events following 9/11 took her in the direction of thinking more critically about policing and the carceral state and its central role in the long histories of racialization and inequality.
“One of the primary reasons I was drawn to the Twin Cities is that this is the place where a summer of extraordinary protest — extraordinary from the vantage point of U.S. history — took off in response to George Floyd’s murder,” she says. “It is special for me to be here, to learn more and work with students who care about police violence and social change,” she says.
Akbar has researched numerous recent social movements, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter. “I find these movements incredibly important to think about,” she says. “I’m interested in the limits of what they have been able to achieve and the complex reasons why their victories have been thwarted. It’s important to understand that the preferences of ordinary citizens often do not make it into law, that organized wealth and power dictate law and policy. The narrative that these movements failed because of the unpopularity of their ideas is wrong or oversimplified.”
Akbar is teaching criminal law and a reading group on critical theory and lawyering in her first year at Minnesota Law. “I love teaching 1Ls,” she says. “I believe criminal law is fundamental to understanding the state of the democracy, no matter what students want to do professionally. My job is to build spaces and equip students to talk about difficult and urgent matters that too often we don’t have the courage to take on directly.”
Samuel J. Merchant
Sam Merchant took a nontraditional path to becoming a law professor. After graduating from college, he owned a business and then traveled the world with a startup company, living in a new city every few months. “Living in so many places was incredibly enriching,” he says. “It also helped me narrow down my career options to either a J.D. or a Ph.D. in philosophy.”
Merchant chose the former. “It dawned on me that law, politics, ethics, and criminal justice consumed my free time,” he says. “And as they say, if you make your hobbies your career, you never have to work a day in your life.”
His interest in how a society treats its members, especially its non-conforming members, led him to his fields of expertise: sentencing theory and the intersection of criminal law and constitutional law. “Whether, why, and how long the government deprives someone of their liberties is tremendously important to me,” he says. “Sentencing is typically the epicenter of that question for me and the focus of my research.”
After earning his J.D., Merchant practiced for several years as a litigator before clerking for a federal judge. In 2022, he became one of four fellows at the U.S. Supreme Court, working at both the Supreme Court and the United States Sentencing Commission, where he helped prepare amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.
“Being a fellow was an invaluable experience,” he says. “It gave me context, knowledge, and connections that are critical for my research and my teaching.”
In 2024, he recommended to the U.S. Sentencing Commission that it study and incorporate into its policymaking developments in our understanding of human behavior and advancements in research practices. In 2025, the Commission created and funded the Research and Data Practices Advisory Group and appointed Merchant as a member.
Following his fellowship at the Supreme Court, Merchant taught constitutional law, criminal procedure, sentencing, and habeas corpus as visiting assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. He was also a research fellow at the Georgetown Law Center for the Constitution.
His recent article, “A World Without Federal Sentencing Guidelines,” published in the Washington University Law Review, compared actual sentences imposed with and without Federal Sentencing Guidelines for the same offenses and same types of offenders. His empirical analysis revealed that judges tend to impose harsher and more disparate sentences when they do not use sentencing guidelines. Merchant argues that sentencing within a guideline framework provides more certainty and minimizes unwarranted disparities. Parties are citing the scholarship in court cases, and it is being relied upon by agencies, states, tribes, and foreign countries that are considering establishing guidelines.
While part of Merchant’s research focuses on the future of the criminal system, another component draws lessons from the past. His new book, Revolution in Redline: The Iterative Journey of the U.S. Constitution, traces the documents and ideas that inspired the Founding Documents and describes the connections between them.
“Academics have a duty to help the public understand and appreciate the law, particularly today where there is so much misinformation and misunderstanding,” he says. “This book uses the modern tool of tracked changes and comments to show why the drafters selected the words and phrases they did. It brings readers into ‘the room where it happened,’ hopefully making these older texts accessible, exciting, and engaging for modern readers.”
Merchant is eager to teach. “I love having a hand in the trajectory of the next generation of lawyers,” he says. “I like using my unique experiences and path to academia to help guide students toward fulfilling and meaningful careers.”
Vinita R. Singh
When Vinita Singh was an associate at Kirkland & Ellis working on sophisticated international transactions, she began to wonder about the geopolitical impact of the foreign and U.S. capital flowing into and out of the country. A student of foreign policy and international politics, she decided to return to school and earn her LL.M. “I liked the complex transactional work, but I knew I wanted to focus on the intersection of national security and international business,” she says.
Today Singh is an emerging expert on economic statecraft. Her research explores how cohesive, carefully crafted approaches and economic tools can help advance foreign policy. She has a particular interest in how federal income taxation can be used to advance goals for U.S. foreign policy and national security.
“There is bipartisan consensus that economic tools are central to our foreign relations, but we need to think alongside economists about which tools we want to use and when, if we are to be effective,” she says.
Singh comes to Minnesota Law from the University of Iowa College of Law, where she was a visiting assistant professor and faculty fellow for the past two years. She earned her J.D. from the same school and her LL.M. in national security law from Georgetown University Law Center. She is teaching federal income and corporate taxation in her first year in Minnesota.
Singh’s research on sovereign tax immunity as a national security tool will be published this fall in the Brigham Young University Law Review. She also has written on effectiveness of sanctions for the Northwestern University Law Review and space piracy for the Fordham International Law Journal.
She looks forward to immersing herself in the scholarly community at Minnesota Law. “The faculty is very supportive of each other,” she notes. “I’m pleased to be working alongside wonderful colleagues.”
A self-declared “foodie” and nature lover, Singh says the Twin Cities is an ideal fit for her. “The location and this institution made this an easy choice for me. I am finding there is so much to do, both on campus and around town.”