Akshat Agarwal

Hello,

I am the 2025-2027 Drinan Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School. I research and write about the legal regulation of families and how societal contexts and the political economy shape the law and are shaped by it. This includes concrete questions about the law of parent-child relationships and adult romantic relationships, as well as the interaction between the State and the family. While I primarily focus on the Anglo-American world and South Asia, I use comparative law as a refractive lens to ask new questions and enhance our understanding of existing issues.

I am completing my J.S.D. at Yale Law School, focusing on the changing law of parent-child relationships and its impact on legal concepts such as parenthood, parents’ rights, and children’s interests. My current project seeks to normatively reframe the law’s understanding of children’s interests and parenthood to reflect the rise of non-traditional families more accurately. I have also written about the politics of family law and LGBTQ+ rights in India, the regulation of paid domestic work, and end-of-life care. My scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the Case Western Reserve Law Review, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, and the Indian Law Review. I was recently awarded the Colin Picker Graduate Prize for best article by the American Society of Comparative Law.

I also regularly contribute to newspapers and legal blogs and have previously worked at a legal policy think tank in New Delhi and practiced at a leading Indian law firm.

Apart from family law, I am also interested in comparative public law, human rights law, and law and global political economy. I hold a Master of Laws (LL.M.) (2021) from Yale Law School, New Haven, and a Bachelor of Arts and Law (B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) (2017) (J.D. equivalent) from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru.

BC Webpage I YLS Webpage I X (formerly Twitter): @AkshatAg18 I LinkedIn