May 9, 2007 -- Yale Law Professor Heather Gerken Joins Campaign Legal Center Board

The Campaign Legal Center is pleased to announce that Heather Gerken has joined the organization's Board of Directors. Ms. Gerken is a Professor at Yale Law School where she specializes in election law, constitutional law, and civil procedure.

A widely published author, Ms. Gerken is one of the country's leading experts on voting rights and election law, the role of groups in the democratic process, and the relationship between diversity and democracy . Her proposal that Congress establish a "Democracy Index" - a national ranking system of state election performance - has been incorporated into separate bills by Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and will be the subject of a conference this fall.

"Heather brings to the board a wealth of knowledge and expertise garnered in private practice, as a scholar and educator at some of the nation's premier law schools, and from within the highest courts in the nation," said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center. "Her strong voice and varied experiences will complement and enhance the illustrious group that currently makes up the Legal Center Board."

A native of Massachusetts, Professor Gerken is a summa cum laude graduate of both Princeton University and the University of Michigan Law School. She served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice David H. Souter of the United States Supreme Court, before entering private practice in Washington, D.C.

Prior to joining the faculty at Yale in 2006, Ms. Gerken taught at Harvard Law School, where she was granted tenure and received the Sachs-Freund award as the school's outstanding professor. She is currently working on a book on the trans-substantive concept of "second-order diversity" in American public law.

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