A productive scholar and an award-winning teacher, Pamela S. Karlan is co-director of Stanford Law
School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where students litigate live cases before the Court. One of the nation’s
leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a commissioner on the California Fair
Political Practices Commission, an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund, and a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice
(where she received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the department’s highest award for
employee performance – as part of the team responsible for implementing the Supreme Court’s decision in United
States v. Windsor). Pamela is the co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation,
and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, she was a professor of law at the University of
Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and
Judge Abraham D. Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Karlan is a member
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and the American
Law Institute.

Pamela graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1980 and both a Master of Arts and
Juris Doctor in 1984.