The Harvard Law Review has elected Apsara Iyer ’24 as its 137th president. Iyer succeeds Priscila Coronado ’23.
“Apsara has changed the lives of many editors for the better, and I know she will continue to do so. From the start, she has impressed her fellow editors with her remarkable intelligence, thoughtfulness, warmth, and fierce advocacy. The Law Review is extremely lucky to have her lead this institution. I cannot wait to see what Volume 137 will achieve under her leadership,” said Coronado.
Iyer graduated from Yale in 2016 with a B.A. in Economics & Math and Spanish. Her dedication to archaeology and indigenous communities led her to pursue an MPhil at Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar and, in 2018, to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU). There she investigated art crime, coordinating with international and federal law-enforcement authorities to repatriate more than 1100 stolen works of art to 15 different countries.
Iyer enrolled at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2020. During her 1L summer, as a Chayes International Public Service Fellow, she worked to co-author a chapter in a new casebook on cultural heritage and law with TRANSFORM, a Maastricht-based research initiative.
Committed to fighting illicit antiquities trafficking, Iyer took a leave of absence from Harvard Law School in 2021–22 to return to the DA’s Office, where she worked on an international antiquities trafficking investigation and rose to be the deputy of the ATU.
At Harvard Law School, she is a student in the International Human Rights Clinic.
In a statement announcing her appointment as Harvard Law Review president, Iyer praised her predecessor’s leadership, saying: “Priscila’s leadership is a model for all of us. Since joining the Law Review, I have been inspired by her skillful management, compassion, and capacity to build vibrant, inclusive communities. I am so grateful that we—Volume 137—inherit her legacy, and I am honored to continue building on this important work over the next year.”
The Law Review, founded in 1887 by future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, LL.B. 1887, is an entirely student-edited journal with the largest circulation of any law journal in the world. It is published monthly from November through June.
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