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Jeannie Suk Gersen

John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law

Jeannie Suk Gersen
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Jeannie Suk Gersen is the John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she has taught constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, family law, and the law of art, fashion, and the performing arts. Before joining the faculty in 2006, she served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court, and to Judge Harry Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She was educated at Yale (B.A. 1995), at Oxford (D.Phil 1999) where she was a Marshall Scholar, and at Harvard Law School (J.D. 2002), where she was a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. She has written three books and many articles in scholarly journals and general media. Her book, At Home in the Law, was awarded the Law and Society Association’s Herbert Jacob Prize for the best law and society book of the year. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of Harvard Law School’s Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence. She is a Contributing Writer to The New Yorker.

Education

  • J.D. Harvard Law School, 2002
  • D.Phil Modern Languages Oxford University, 1999
  • B.A. Literature Yale University, 1995

Academic Appointment and Employment History

  • John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (2016 - Present)
    Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Contributing Writer, The New Yorker (2016 - Present)
    New York
  • Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (2011 - 2016)
    Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Visiting Scholar, Columbia Law School (2012 - 2012)
    New York, New York, United States
  • Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (2006 - 2011)
    Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Senior Fellow, Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard (2009 - 2010)
    Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • Alexander Fellow, NYU School of Law (2005 - 2006)
    New York, New York, United States
  • Assistant District Attorney, Manhattan District Attorney's Office (2004 - 2005)
    New York, New York, United States

Bar Admissions

  • Massachusetts, United States (2012)
  • New York, United States (2003)
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, United States
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, United States
  • Supreme Court of the United States, United States

Clerkships

  • Judge Harry T. Edwards, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, 2002 - 2003
  • Justice David H. Souter, Supreme Court of the United States, 2003 - 2004

Board Memberships

  • Governor, School of the Museum of Fine Arts (2012 - 2016)
    Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • Board of Directors, Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence (2014 - 2016)
    Boston, Massachusetts, United States
  • Board of Overseers, Museum of Fine Arts (2014 - 2017)
    Boston, Massachusetts
  • Board Member, Henrietta Lacks Foundation (2017 - Present)
  • Board of Directors, MacDowell (2022 - Present)

Honors and Awards

  • Trailblazer Award, Asian Pacific American Law Students' Association, Harvard Law School (Awards)
    February 2020
  • Law and Society Association's Herbert Jacob Prize (Book Awards)
    Best Law and Society Book of 2009, May 2010
  • Best Lawyers Under 40, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (Awards)
    November 2013
  • Fellow of the MacDowell Colony (Other)
    June 2012
  • Hunter College High School Distinguished Graduate 2016 (Awards)
    June 2016
  • Trailblazer Award, Korean American Lawyers' Association of Greater New York (Awards)
    July 2011
  • Marshall Scholarship (Awards)
    September 1995
  • Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans (Awards)
    January 2001
  • Intellectual Diversity Award, Federalist Society, Harvard Law School (Awards)
    April 2013
  • Top Woman of Law, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly (Awards)
    December 2010
  • Pony Chung Innovation Award (Awards)
    Seoul, Korea, June 2013
  • Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence (Awards)
    May 2016
  • Guggenheim Fellowship (Awards)
    August 2010

Representative Publications

View all publications by Jeannie Suk Gersen