Ari Melber

About

Ari Naftali Melber (born March 31, 1980) is an American attorney and Emmy Award-winning journalist who is the Chief Legal Correspondent for MS NOW and host of The Beat with Ari Melber.
Melber won a 2016 Emmy Award for Supreme Court reporting and was nominated for Emmy Awards in 2020 and 2025 in the “Outstanding Live Interview” category.

Melber is Jewish, the son of an Israeli immigrant. His grandparents were Holocaust survivors.
Melber attended Garfield High School, in Seattle, Washington. He then attended the University of Michigan, where he graduated with an A.B. degree in political science in 2002. After college, he moved to Washington, D.C. and worked for Senator Maria Cantwell. He then joined Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign, working the Iowa caucus and as California deputy political director. When Kerry lost, Melber attended Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and graduated with a J.D. in 2009. He interned at New York County Defender Services, a public defender’s office.
Melber worked for First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams at Cahill Gordon & Reindel from 2009 to 2013. He also began…