Justin Driver

Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law
Education

J.D., Harvard Law School, 2004

M.S., Oxford University, 2000

M.A., Duke University, 1998

B.A., Brown University, 1997

Courses Taught
  • Constitutional Law
  • Education Law
  • Narratives from Prison
  • The Law of Racial Inequality
Justin Driver

Justin Driver is the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes in the area of constitutional law and is the author of The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind. The book was selected as a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year and an Editors’ Choice of The New York Times Book ReviewThe Schoolhouse Gate also received the Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law, and was a finalist for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award and Phi Beta Kappa’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Book Award.  

A recipient of the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize, Driver has a distinguished publication record in the nation’s leading law reviews. He has also written extensively for general audiences, including pieces in SlateThe AtlanticThe New York TimesThe Washington Post, and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. An elected member of the American Law Institute and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Driver is also an editor of the Supreme Court Review. In 2021, President Biden appointed Driver to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2024, President Biden appointed him to serve on the U.S. Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise.

Previously, Driver was the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. Driver is a graduate of Brown, Oxford (where he was a Marshall Scholar), Duke (where he received certification to teach public school), and Harvard Law School (where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review). After graduating from Harvard, Driver clerked for then-Judge Merrick Garland, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (Ret.), and Justice Stephen Breyer.

News