Nicholas Stephanopoulos, an expert on election law and constitutional law, has joined Harvard Law School as professor of law, effective Jan. 1. He was previously a professor of law and the Herbert and Marjorie Fried Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School.
Stephanopoulos’ research and teaching interests include election law, constitutional law, legislation, administrative law, comparative law, and local government law. He has been involved in several litigation efforts, including a pair of partisan gerrymandering lawsuits based in part on his academic work that both recently reached the Supreme Court.
“I am thrilled that Nick Stephanopoulos has decided to join our faculty,” said John F. Manning ’85, the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean of Harvard Law School. “He has written path-breaking scholarship in the fields of election law and voting rights and is an exceptional teacher. Through his work across multiple disciplines, Nick has helped to identify simultaneously creative and thoroughly grounded ways to improve the functioning of our electoral system and our democracy.”
Stephanopoulos was a member of the University of Chicago law faculty having received tenure in 2017, after having served as an assistant professor of law since 2012. In addition to teaching courses on election law, constitutional law, and administrative law, he helped organize the Public Law & Legal Theory Workshop. Previously, he was an associate-in-law at Columbia Law School, where he taught legal research and writing to first-year law students.
At Harvard Law School in the Fall of 2018, he taught Election Law and the Future of Voting Rights as the Austin Wakeman Scott Visiting Professor of Law.
From 2007 to 2010, he worked as an associate at Jenner & Block, in Washington, D.C., where his practice focused on complex federal litigation, appellate advocacy, and election law, particularly redistricting and campaign finance.
He is a co-author of the 6th edition of “Election Law: Cases and Materials,” with Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Richard L. Hasen, and Daniel P. Tokaji. His academic work has appeared in, among other publications, the Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, NYU Law Review, Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. He has also written numerous articles and op-eds on election law and voting rights for popular publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlantic, New Republic, Slate, and Vox.
Stephanopoulos earned his J.D. at Yale Law School in 2006, where he won the Jewell Prize for best student contribution to a law journal. He served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of International Law and as projects editor of the Yale Law Journal. He also holds a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge University and a bachelor’s degree in government, summa cum laude, from Harvard College.
After law school, Stephanopoulos clerked for Judge Raymond C. Fisher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in California.
“I couldn’t be happier to be joining the Harvard Law School faculty. It’s like a dream come true.” Stephanopoulos said. “Harvard is where I began my life in academia, as an undergraduate more than two decades ago. I’m also from Boston and have always wanted to return home. I can’t wait to start building HLS’s election law offerings and to contribute to HLS’s vibrant community.”