Samuel L. Bray is a Professor of Law and the Walter Mander Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. Before joining the University of Chicago faculty, Sam was a member of the Notre Dame Law School faculty (2018-2025) and the UCLA Law School faculty (2011-2018).

Sam’s primary research interests are the law of remedies and the law of equity. Recent topics include general law, the early history of the interim docket, the prosecution of contempt, the law of equity and change, the options courts have in responding to a recalcitrant executive, the remedies for wrongfully removed officers, the application of the unclean hands doctrine to the executive, and a trio of papers on the preliminary injunction (available here, here, and here).

Sam also writes about law and religion, including topics like statutes requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, Christianity and equity, the influence of the Catholic intellectual tradition on the common law, the canon law contributions of James Ussher, and the concept of scandal in Anglican canon law.

Sam is an author of casebooks on constitutional law (currently with Michael Stokes Paulsen, Michael W. McConnell, and Will Baude) and the law of remedies (the Ames, Chafee, and Re book with Emily Sherwin). He has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Judiciary Committee, and the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute. And he is a McDonald Senior Distinguished Fellow at Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion.

Sam earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated with honors and was book review editor for the University of Chicago Law Review.

His scholarly papers are available at Google Scholar, and works in progress are available at SSRN.