Con Law Prof Off to New Haven

A rising star at Harvard Law School and one of the nation’s foremost experts in election law announced yesterday that she has accepted an offer to teach at Yale Law School beginning this fall.

Professor of Law Heather K. Gerken has garnered praise for both her teaching ability­­—she was the first junior professor to win the prestigious Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence—as well as her scholarship on voting law, diversity, and the role of groups in the democratic process.

A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Michigan Law School, Gerken, who is currently on a visiting professorship at Yale, said that her decision to leave Harvard was based on personal reasons.

“My husband and I had offers at Harvard, NYU, and Yale, and the Yale package made the most sense for us as a family,” Gerken said.

Her husband, David Simon, is a scholar specializing in African politics.

Gerken also said that while she was looking forward to Yale, she was sorry to go at this stage in the Law School’s history.

“It feels like leaving at the beginning of the story rather than the end,” Gerken said. “Yale’s a wonderful place, but it’s also a great time to be at Harvard under [Law School Dean] Elena Kagan’s extraordinary leadership.”

In an e-mail sent to the Law School community yesterday morning, Kagan wrote that “in the six years Heather has served on this faculty, she has become an important and superb scholar.”

“I will miss her very much, as I know everyone else will,” she wrote.

Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Richard H. Fallon, who taught with Gerken last year, called her departure a “terrible loss” for the Law School.

“[Gerken] is a stunningly gifted teacher,” Fallon wrote in an e-mail. “A year ago, she and I co-taught a year-long seminar called the Public Law Workshop [and] it was the best pedagogical experience that I have had in over 20 years of law teaching.”

“Heather has a remarkable capacity to inspire students both collectively and individually,” he added.

Fallon also said that he and Gerken are planning on holding the Public Law Workshop once more next year. Gerken will commute from New Haven to Cambridge to teach the course, he said.

Gerken’s departure comes at a time when the school is growing its professoriate at a rapid pace. Though there had been concern in the past about the depth of the constitutional law faculty at Harvard, both Gerken and Fallon expressed confidence in the strength of the school’s program.

“Harvard will never have any problem finding talented constitutional law professors to teach its students,” Gerken said.

Fallon pointed to numerous hires that the Law School has made in the past year as evidence of the faculty’s continuing strength. The constitutional law professors hired laterally­ in the past year are Daryl J. Levinson ’90 of NYU, C. Adrian Vermeule ’90 of the University of Chicago, and Mark V. Tushnet ’67 of Georgetown. In addition, Kagan confirmed in a February interview that a full-time offer has been made to the University of Chicago’s Cass R. Sunstein ’75, a very influential administrative and constitutional law scholar.

Expanding the Law School’s faculty has been a hallmark of Kagan’s tenure as dean. Michael A. Armini, the school’s spokesman, said that the dean realizes “there will inevitably be departures and retirements,” and that the school takes those into consideration in its hiring.

“We plan on welcoming some stellar new hires this fall,” Armini said.

Yale Law School Dean Harold H. Koh ’75 warmly—and poetically­—welcomed Gerken to New Haven in a statement released to The Crimson yesterday.

“Her work shines penetrating light both on why we value diversity, and on what kinds of diversity we should value,” Koh said. “Her brilliant teaching, scholarship, and citizenship will make her an anchor for Yale Law School’s faculty and a beacon for our students and alumni for many generations to come.”

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.