Vicki Jackson

Vicki C. Jackson, Laurence H. Tribe Professor of Constitutional Law (previously known as the Thurgood Marshall Professor of Constitutional Law), writes and teaches about U.S. constitutional law, federal courts, and comparative constitutional law. She is the author of Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era (2010), and coauthor, with Mark Tushnet, Rosalind Dixon, and Madhav Khosla, of Comparative Constitutional Law (4th ed. 2025), a course book in the field. She has written on federalism, gender equality, election law, free speech, knowledge institutions, sovereign immunity, justiciability, judicial independence, proportionality review, the co-evolution of international and constitutional law, methodological challenges in comparative constitutional law, and other topics.

Her edited collections include Redefining Comparative Constitutional Law(with Madhav Khosla, co-editor, 2024); Constitutionalism and a Right to Effective Government? (Yasmin Dawood, co-editor, 2022); Comparative Constitutional Law (2020) (with Mila Versteeg, co-editor); Proportionality: New Frontiers, New Challenges (2017) (with Mark Tushnet, co-editor); Constitutionalism Across Borders in the Struggle Against Terrorism (2016) (with Federico Fabbrini, co-editor); Federal Courts Stories (2010) (with Judith Resnik, co-editor); and Defining the Field of Constitutional Law (2002) (with Mark Tushnet, co-editor). Other books include Federalism (2013) (with Susan Low Bloch) and a course book, Inside the Supreme Court: The Institution and Its Procedures (2d ed., 2008) (with Susan Low Bloch and Thomas G. Krattenmaker). Her current scholarly projects include work on the role of knowledge institutions in constitutional democracies (and implications for U.S. First Amendment, separation of powers, and administrative law); the role of effective government in sustaining constitutionalism; normative conceptions of the role of elected representatives in democracies; proportionality as principle and doctrine; executive power and the judicial role in democracies; and judging and gender.

In addition to being on advisory or editorial boards of scholarly journals (Comparative Constitutional Studies, Federal Law Review and Global Constitutionalism), she was (2015-2021) the Reporter for the ALI’s Project, Principles of the Law: Student Sexual Misconduct: Procedural Frameworks for Colleges and Universities. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), as its President, and as Chair of the AALS Federal Courts Section. She has also served on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law, on the Board of Managerial Trustees of the International Association of Women Judges, and on the D.C. Bar Board of Governors. She also has practiced law, in private practice and as a government lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice, and served as a law clerk to three federal judges: Murray Gurfein, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Morris E. Lasker, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; and Thurgood Marshall, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court.