Heather Gerken

Heather Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School where she specializes in election law, constitutional law, and civil procedure. Professor Gerken is one of the country's leading experts on voting rights and election law, the role of groups in the democratic process, and the relationship between diversity and democracy. A native of Massachusetts, Professor Gerken graduated from Princeton University, where she received her A.B. degree summa cum laude in 1991, and from the University of Michigan Law School, where she received her J.D. summa cum laude in 1994. She then served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice David H. Souter of the United States Supreme Court, before entering private practice in Washington, D.C. In 2000 Professor Gerken became an assistant professor at Harvard Law School, where she was granted tenure and won the Sachs-Freund teaching award. She joined the Yale faculty in 2006. She is currently working on a book on the trans-substantive concept of "second-order diversity" in American public law.