Amanda Shanor
- Assistant Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics
Contact Information
- Primary Email:
shanor@wharton.upenn.edu - Office Phone:
215-898-1729
- office Address:
666 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
Overview
Amanda Shanor is an Assistant Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where her scholarship focuses on constitutional law, and particularly the intersection of the First Amendment and economic life.
Prior to joining the academy, Professor Shanor worked in the National Legal Department of the American Civil Liberties Union on the organization’s Supreme Court litigation, including Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. She was previously a fellow at Georgetown University Law Center’s Center on National Security & the Law, where she litigated constitutional and national security cases, including Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder.
Professor Shanor has taught courses at Yale Law School and Georgetown University Law Center, and has published in the New York University Law Review, the Harvard Law Review Forum, and the Yale Law Journal Forum, among others. She is a regular contributor to the legal blog Take Care and the co-author of a textbook on counterterrorism law.
Professor Shanor served as a law clerk to Judges Cornelia T.L. Pillard and Judith W. Rogers on the District of Columbia Circuit, and Judge Robert W. Sweet in the Southern District of New York. She is a graduate of Yale Law School and Yale College, and a PhD candidate in law at Yale University.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=756947
Research
Amanda Shanor and Sarah E. Light (2022), Greenwashing and the First Amendment, Columbia Law Review, 122, pp. 2033-2118.
Abstract: Recent explosive growth in environmental and climate-related marketing claims by business firms has raised concerns about their truthfulness. Critics argue (or at least question whether) such claims constitute greenwashing, which refers to a set of deceptive marketing practices in which an entity publicly misrepresents or exaggerates the positive environmental impact of a product, service, or the entity itself. The extent to which greenwashing can be regulated consistent with the First Amendment raises thorny doctrinal questions that have bedeviled both courts and scholars, the answers to which have implications far beyond environmental marketing claims. This Essay is the first to offer both doctrinal clarity and a normative approach to understanding how the First Amendment should tackle issues at the nexus of science, politics, and markets. It contends that the analysis should be driven by the normative values underlying the protection of speech under the First Amendment in the disparate doctrines that govern these three arenas. When listeners are epistemically dependent for information on commercial speakers, regulation of such speech for truthfulness is consistent with the First Amendment and subject to the laxer review of the commercial speech doctrine. This is because citizens must have accurate information not only to knowledgeably participate at the ballot box but also to have meaningful freedom in economic life itself.
Teaching
All Courses
LAW5010 - Constitutional Law
LAW9990 - Independent Study Project
Independent Study Project
LGST1010 - Law and Social Values
This course presents law as an evolving social institution, with special emphasis on the legal regulation of business in the context of social values. It considers basic concepts of law and legal process, in the U.S. and other legal systems, and introduces the fundamentals of rigorous legal analysis. An in-depth examination of contract law is included.
LGST2210 - Const Law & Free Enterpr
The course explores the fundamentals of U.S. constitutional doctrine and adjudication, with an emphasis on commercial and business issues and implications of constitutional law. The course starts by considering the Constitution and the structure and relationship of the governmental entities it establishes and upon which it depends. Special attention is given to the role of the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court, in interpreting and applying constitutional principles. From this foundation, the course moves on to examine in detail the major economic and business implications of constitutional law in different eras of the nation's history. A core theme is how historical events and changing notions of public policy have affected and been affected by the evolution of constitutional doctrine.
PPE3999 - Independent Study
Student arranges with a faculty member to pursue a research project on a suitable topic. For more information about research and setting up independent studies, visit: https://ppe.sas.upenn.edu/study/curriculum/independent-studies