Heather K. Gerken, one of the nation's leading experts in constitutional law, election law, and federalism, was recently appointed Sterling Professor of Law.
A Sterling Professorship is considered the premier campus honor for a Yale professor.
Gerken, the former dean of Yale Law School (YLS), assumes the presidency of the Ford Foundation this fall, and will remain part of the Yale faculty as professor emerita.
Gerken joined the faculty at YLS in 2006 and was named the inaugural J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law in 2008. Upon her appointment as dean of YLS in 2017, she was named the Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law.
Over the past eight years, Gerken - the first female dean in Yale Law School's 200-year history - has been a transformational figure at the school. She has redefined legal education, expanded access to the profession, and changed the institution for the better while hewing to the school's values and traditions. She launched two pipeline-to-law school programs, expanded the school's financial aid structures, created the first full-tuition scholarship for low-income law students in the country, and dramatically increased the school's veteran population. She also established The Tsai Leadership Program, broadening the curriculum and offering new opportunities for professional development and mentorship at the school, and established the Crossing Divides Program, which aims to foster discourse across the political spectrum and reinforce the core values of lawyering.
Widely known as the founder of the "nationalist school" of federalism, Gerken has shaped the field in innumerable ways through wide-ranging scholarship over more than three decades in academia. During her time at Yale, she has continued to publish influential scholarly work that has advanced the field of election law and influenced policy at the highest levels.
With more than 50 published articles in academic journals and popular publications, as well as numerous awards for her legal writing, Gerken's scholarship has had a profound impact on the profession. Her work inspired three academic symposia by the time she was in her early forties, and she was one of the youngest scholars to be asked to write the Harvard Foreword, a singular honor in public law.
Her book, "The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System is Failing and How to Fix It," inspired election reform when it was adopted by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2013.
Throughout her career, Gerken has been recognized for her excellence in teaching. She won the Yale Law Women Faculty Teaching Award and was named one of the best law teachers in the country in the publication "What the Best Law Teachers Do." While on the faculty at Harvard Law School, she was named the 2002-2003 Sacks-Freund award winner, the first non-tenured teacher to earn that honor. She also is the founder of one of the country's most innovative local government legal clinics, the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project, which she continued to lead during her deanship.
Gerken's record of service for the public good is prodigious. She has been asked to testify before Congress three times. She served as a senior adviser to the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012, is a member of the American Law Institute, and was one of the first members of her generation of legal scholars to be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also served as a member of the Task Force for American Democracy, a bipartisan group of experts that works to improve trust in the U.S. election system.
"It is difficult to overstate Dean Gerken's contributions to not just this law school, but Yale University, as well as legal education across the United States," said Yair Listokin, interim dean at YLS and the Shibley Family Fund Professor of Law.
Gerken is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. After law school, she clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court.
