Biography

A productive scholar and award-winning teacher, Pamela S. Karlan is also the founding director of the school’s extraordinarily successful 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 and an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Professor Karlan is the co-author of three leading casebooks on constitutional law and related subjects, as well as more than four dozen scholarly articles. She is a widely recognized commentator on legal issues.

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 Supreme Court of the United States 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 and of the American Law Institute.

Key Works

• Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan and Richard H. Pildes, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, New York: Foundation Press, 3rd ed., August 2007.
• Pamela S. Karlan, The Paradoxical Structure of Constitutional Litigation, 75 Fordham Law Review 1913 (2007).
• Pamela S. Karlan, John C. Jeffries, Jr., Peter W. Low and George A. Rutherglen, Civil Rights Actions: Enforcing the Constitution, New York: Foundation Press, 2nd ed., 2007.
• Pamela S. Karlan, New Beginnings and Dead Ends in the Law of Democracy (Symposium: Election Law and the Roberts Court), 68 Ohio State Law Journal 743 (2007).
• Pamela S. Karlan. With Geoffry R. Stone, Louis Michael Seidman, Cass R. Sunstein, and Mark V. Tushnet, Constitutional Law, 5th ed., New York: Aspen Publishers, 2005.
• Pamela S. Karlan, John Hart Ely and the Problem of Gerrymandering: the Lion in Winter, 114 Yale Law Journal 1329 (2005).

In the News

• Justices Weigh Value of a Rule That Limits Evidence
  The New York Times, October 08, 2008
• Law Professors Debate Constitutional Analysis At 8th Circuit Judicial Conference
  St. Louis Daily Record/St. Louis Countian, August 15, 2008
• Ken Starr, Drew Days Discuss Revealing Supreme Court Term
  ABA Journal, August 09, 2008
• Bush V. Gore Rears Its Head: The Triumph Of Politics Over Law (Part II)
  The Huffington Post, July 30, 2008
• Approaching The Nation's Highest Bench
  Law Quadrangle Notes, July 25, 2008

Courses & Programs

Courses

• Constitutional Law I
• Constitutional Litigation
• Regulation of the Political Process
• Supreme Court Litigation Clinic
• Supreme Court Term

Programs

• Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Co-Director

Publications & Cases

Recent Publications View All

• Pamela S. Karlan, The Law of Small Numbers: Gonzales v. Carhart, Parents Involved in Community Schools, and Some Themes From the First Full Term of the Roberts Court, 86 North Carolina Law Review 1369 (June 2008).
• Pamela S. Karlan, Thomas C. Goldstein, Reid H. Weingarten and Amy Howe, Petition for a Writ of Certiorari: Kay v. United States of America, No. 07- in the Supreme Court of the United States (April 9, 2008).
• Thomas C. Goldstein, Kevin K. Russell, Kassius O. Benson and Pamela S. Karlan, Reply Brief for the Petitioner: Greenlaw v. United States of America, No. 07-330 in the Supreme Court of the United States (April 8, 2008).
• Pamela S. Karlan and Karen Getman, Pluralists and Republicans, Rules and Standards: Conflicts of Interest and the California Experience, in Conflict of Interest and Public Life: Cross-National Perspectives, Christine Trost and Alison L. Gash, eds., New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Pamela S. Karlan, Jeffrey L. Fisher, et. al., Brief in Opposition: Dickinson v. Collier, No. 07-197 in the Supreme Court of the United States (November 2007).
• Pamela S. Karlan, Framing the Voting Rights Claims of Cognitively Impaired Individuals, 38 McGeorge Law Review (2007).
• Pamela S. Karlan, Compelling Interests/Compelling Institutions: Law Schools as Constitutional Litigants, 54 UCLA Law Review 1613 (August 2007).
• Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan and Richard H. Pildes, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, New York: Foundation Press, 3rd ed., August 2007.
• Pamela S. Karlan, How Voting Rights Arose in Southern Courts (Book Review: Brian K. Landsberg, Free at Last to Vote: The Alabama Origins of the 1865 Voting Rights Act), Legal Times, June 25, 2007, pg. 43.
• Pamela S. Karlan, Section 5 Squared: Congressional Power to Extend and Amend the Voting Rights Act, 44 Houston Law Review 1 (2007).

Affiliations & Honors

Professional Affiliations

• Member, American Law Institute
• Cooperating Attorney, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund
• Former Commissioner, California Fair Political Practices Commission
• Affiliated Faculty, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

Honors and Awards

• Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Recipient, University of Virginia All-University Outstanding Teaching Award, 1995-96
• Recipient, State Council on Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award, 1997
• Recipient, John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching, Stanford, 2002
• Honoree, The Public Sector 45, American Lawyer, 1997