Vicki C. Jackson, a leading expert on U.S. constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and federal courts, was named president of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) at its January 2019 annual meeting in New Orleans.
“For more than a century, the Association of American Law Schools has advanced excellence in legal education and I am honored and humbled by the opportunity to serve as its president,” said Jackson. “Legal institutions, representation and elections, and knowledge institutions (including universities) are central pillars supporting our constitutional democracy, and all face significant new challenges. I look forward to working with our member schools to consider how legal education can best help prepare our students to meet those challenges, whether as advocates, counselors, judges, legislators, or other leaders in government, business, or community.”
Jackson was appointed Harvard Law School’s first Thurgood Marshall Professor of Constitutional Law in 2011. Prior to joining the Harvard Law School faculty, she was a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
She is the author of “Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era” (2010), and coauthor, with Mark Tushnet, of “Comparative Constitutional Law” (3d ed. 2014), a leading course book in the field. She has written on constitutional aspects of federalism, gender equality, election law, free speech, sovereign immunity, courts and judicial independence, methodological challenges in comparative constitutional law, and other topics.
In addition to serving on the AALS Executive Committee, she has 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, as Chair of the Federal Courts Section of the AALS, and on the D.C. Bar Board of Governors.
Jackson holds a B.A. summa cum laude, from Yale College, where she was Phi Beta Kappa and majored in history. She earned her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
With Jackson’s election, for the first time in AALS’s 119-year history, all three officers of the organization are women. Jackson is the 2019 AALS president, Wendy Perdue, dean of the University of Richmond School of Law, is the immediate past president of AALS and Darby Dickerson, dean, John Marshall Law School, has been named 2019 President-Elect.
The Association of American Law Schools (AALS), founded in 1900, is a nonprofit association of 179 law schools. Its members enroll most of the nation’s law students and produce the majority of the country’s lawyers and judges, as well as many of its lawmakers. The mission of AALS is to uphold and advance excellence in legal education. In support of this mission, AALS promotes the core values of excellence in teaching and scholarship, academic freedom, and diversity, including diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints, while seeking to improve the legal profession, to foster justice, and to serve our many communities–local, national and international.
Read more: ‘State of Legal Education is Excellent,’ Says New Law School Association President