Public Interest Law Faculty

Muneer Ahmad is Sol Goldman Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He co-teaches in the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC). In WIRAC, he and his students represent individuals, groups and organizations in both litigation and non-litigation matters related to immigration, immigrants’ rights, and labor, and intersections among them.

Monica Bell is a Professor of Law and an Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Bell works at the intersection of law and sociology, using sociological theory and research to explore legal questions regarding race and class inequality. Some subject matters that Bell has focused on include policing, violence, safety and security, welfare and public benefits, housing, and residential segregation.

Fiona Doherty is Nathan Baker Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She founded the Criminal Justice Clinic, which defends indigent clients accused of felony and misdemeanor offenses in New Haven. She also teaches courses in Criminal Law and Sentencing. Professor Doherty is a recipient of the Yale Provost’s Teaching Prize.

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.

James Forman Jr. is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law. Professor Forman’s scholarship focuses on schools, police, and prisons. He is particularly interested in the race and class dimensions of those institutions. In January 2022, Forman helped launch the Yale Law and Racial Justice Center, which brings together New Haveners, Yale students, staff, and faculty, local government officials, and local and national experts to imagine and implement projects advancing racial justice.

Heather K. Gerken is the Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law and is in her second term as Dean of Yale Law School. Dean Gerken is one of the country’s leading experts on constitutional law and election law. A founder of the “nationalist school” of federalism, her work focuses on federalism, diversity, and dissent.

Miriam Gohara is a Clinical Professor of Law. Before joining the Yale Law School faculty, Professor Gohara spent 16 years representing death-sentenced clients in post-conviction litigation. Professor Gohara teaches and writes about capital and non-capital sentencing, incarceration, and the historical and social forces implicated in culpability and punishment.

Issa Kohler-Hausmann is Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale. Her primary research interests are in criminal law, sociology of law, empirical legal studies, social and legal theory.

Professor Douglas Kysar is Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law at Yale Law School and faculty co-director of the Law, Ethics and Animals Program. His teaching and research areas include torts, animal law, environmental law, climate change, products liability, and risk regulation. Kysar was previously on the faculty at Cornell Law School.

Anika Singh Lemar is a Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School where she teaches clinics that represent affordable housing developers, tenants, homeowners, small businesses, community development financial institutions, fair housing advocates, and cooperatives. Professor Singh Lemar writes about land use, zoning, and housing.

Tracey L. Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor and a Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. Professor Meares is a nationally recognized expert on policing in urban communities. Her research focuses on understanding how members of the public think about their relationship(s) with legal authorities such as police, prosecutors and judges. She teaches courses on criminal procedure, criminal law, and policy.

Douglas NeJaime is Anne Urowsky Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he teaches in the areas of family law, legal ethics, law and sexuality, and constitutional law. Before joining the Yale faculty in 2017, NeJaime was Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, where he served as Faculty Director of the Williams Institute, a research institute on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.

Marisol Orihuela is a Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She was most recently a Deputy Federal Public Defender at the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Los Angeles. She has previously worked as a Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Judith Resnik is the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the Founding Director of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law. She teaches courses on federalism, procedure, courts, prisons, equality, and citizenship.

Cristina Rodríguez is the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her research interests include constitutional law and theory; immigration law and policy; administrative law and process; language rights and policy; and citizenship theory.

David N. Schleicher is Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School and is an expert in local government law, land use, federalism, state and local finance and urban development. His work has been published widely in academic journals, including The Yale Law Journal and the University of Chicago Law Review, as well as in popular outlets like The Atlantic and Slate.

Vicki Schultz is the Ford Foundation Professor of Law and Social Sciences at Yale Law School, where she teaches courses on the family, state and market, family law, employment discrimination law, workplace theory and policy, work and gender, law and social science, feminist theory, and related subjects.

Professor Reva Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Professor Siegel’s writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution.

Gerald Torres is Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment, with a secondary appointment as Professor of Law at the Law School. A pioneer in the field of environmental law, Torres has spent his career examining the intrinsic connections between the environment, agricultural and food systems, and social justice.

Tom R. Tyler is the Macklin Fleming Professor Emeritus of Law as well as a Founding Director of The Justice Collaboratory. His research explores the role of justice in shaping people’s relationships with groups, organizations, communities, and societies. In particular, he examines the role of judgments about the justice or injustice of group procedures in shaping legitimacy, compliance, and cooperation.

Michael J. Wishnie is the William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law. His teaching, scholarship, and law practice have focused on immigration, labor and employment, habeas corpus, civil rights, government transparency, and veterans law.