Heather K. Gerken
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Heather Kristin Gerken (born ) is an American legal scholar who serves as the Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches election law and runs the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project.


Biography


Early life and education

Gerken grew up in
Bolton, Massachusetts Bolton is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Bolton is in eastern Massachusetts, located 25 miles west-northwest of downtown Boston. The population was 5,665 at the 2020 census. History The town of Bolton was incorpora ...
. Gerken graduated ''
summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
'' from Princeton University with an A.B. in history in 1991 after completing a 123-page long senior thesis titled "Stepping Out of the Bounds of Womanhood: An Analysis of the Popular Image of Women and Women's Experiences during World War II". In 1994, she graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, ''summa cum laude'', and Order of the Coif, where she served as editor-in-chief of the '' Michigan Law Review''. She clerked for Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...
, and then for Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1995 Term.


Legal career

She was an associate at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C., from December 1996 to July 2000. From July 2000 to June 2006, she was a professor at
Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...
, where she was also a fellow at the Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Profession from September 2003 to July 2004. In 2006 Gerken joined Yale Law School and in 2008 she became the inaugural J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law. In 2009, in her book The Democracy Index (Princeton University Press), she proposed an index that would rate and compare the performance of elections systems at the state and local levels, to evaluate and improve the U.S. elections system. She became dean of Yale Law School in 2017, and in the same year she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2021, she was named to the Presidential Commission on the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
, created by President Joe Biden in order to "provide an analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform" in the context of evaluating the history and future of the court and its practices. In January 2022, Yale University President Peter Salovey announced that Gerken had been reappointed as Dean of Yale Law School for a second five-year term.


Personal life

Gerken is married to David Simon.


Bibliography

* ''The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System is Failing and How to Fix It'' ( Princeton University Press 2009) *
Slipping the Bonds of Federalism
, 128 ''
Harvard Law Review The ''Harvard Law Review'' is a law review published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the ''Harvard Law Review''s 2015 impact factor of 4.979 placed the journal first out of 143 ...
'' 85 (2014) * "The Political Safeguards of Horizontal Federalism", 113 '' Michigan Law Review'' 57 (2014) (with Ari Holtzblatt) * "The Real Problem with Citizens United: Campaign Finance, Dark Money, and Shadow Parties", 97 ''
Marquette Law Review The ''Marquette Law Review'' is a quarterly law review edited by students at Marquette University Law School. Articles, essays, and student-written notes and comments from the review are accessible in PDF format on its web site, as well as online ...
'' 904 (2014) * "Uncooperative Federalism", 118 ''
Yale Law Journal The ''Yale Law Journal'' (YLJ), known also as the ''Yale Law Review'', is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School. Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students ...
'' 1256 (2009) (with Jessica Bulman-Pozen)


See also

*
List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 3) Law clerks have assisted the justices of the United States Supreme Court in various capacities since the first one was hired by Justice Horace Gray in 1882. Each justice is permitted to have between three and four law clerks per Court term. Mos ...


References


External links


Appearances
on C-Span.org
Bio
Yale Law School {{DEFAULTSORT:Gerken, Heather 1969 births American lawyers American legal scholars American legal writers American women academics Deans of Yale Law School Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Harvard Law School faculty Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Deans of law schools in the United States Living people People associated with Jenner & Block People from Bolton, Massachusetts Princeton University alumni University of Michigan Law School alumni Women deans (academic) Yale University faculty 20th-century American women lawyers 20th-century American lawyers 21st-century American women lawyers 21st-century American lawyers 21st-century American academics