Akshat Agarwal

I am the 2025-2027 Drinan Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School. I research and write about the legal regulation of intimate human relationships, including parent-child relationships, familial adult relationships, and the interaction between the state and the family.

I am motivated by two questions. First, what is the relationship between the law and familial social norms? Second, how do and should our justice-oriented commitments (equality, autonomy, etc.) inform the regulation of these norms? I am also interested in exploring how changes in culture, political economy, and technology both shape these questions and inform our answers. My legal training in both India and the United States further shapes my scholarship through comparative insights, enabling me to ask questions that a purely domestic focus might miss.

I recently submitted my doctoral dissertation at Yale Law School, which explores the relationship between the legal concepts of “parenthood” and “children’s interests” in the context of parenthood law’s expansion to include non-traditional families.

You can contact me at akshat.agarwal@yale.edu or agarwaks@bc.edu or find me on X or LinkedIn.