Judith Resnik (professor)


Judith Resnik is an American legal scholar and the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she is also the founding director of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law. She is known for her scholarship on civil procedure, federal courts, federalism, gender and law, and the criminal justice system, particularly prisons and punishment.
WWW law.yale.edu/judith-resni...

Education and early career

Resnik received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 1972 and her J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1975, where she was a Hays Civil Liberties Fellow. After law school, she clerked for Judge Charles E. Stewart of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Resnik began her teaching career in 1976 as a clinical lecturer at Yale Law School, where she taught classes on post-conviction remedies and worked with law students representing inmates at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. In 1980, she joined the faculty of the University of Southern California Law School, where she served until 1997, achieving early tenure and promotion to full professor.

Academic career

Yale Law School

In 1997, Resnik joined Yale Law School as the first Arthur Liman Professor of Law, a position she continues to hold. She teaches courses on federalism, procedure, courts, prisons, equality, and citizenship.

Scholarship

Managerial Judges

Resnik's most influential early work is her 1982 Harvard Law Review article "Managerial Judges," which analyzed the transformation of the judicial role from passive arbiter to active case manager. The article documented how judges increasingly engaged in pretrial conferences, settlement negotiations, and informal dispute resolution, raising concerns about judicial impartiality, due process, and the erosion of public adjudication.
The article has been widely cited in legal scholarship and judicial opinions. In November 2022, Yale Law School hosted a conference to mark the 40th anniversary of its publication, featuring panels on contemporary challenges in civil procedure and concluding with a conversation between Resnik and Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. A symposium reflecting on the article's legacy was published in the Review of Litigation in 2024.

Prison reform and punishment

Resnik has conducted extensive research on prisons, punishment, and the criminal justice system. Her book Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy, published by the University of Chicago Press in fall 2025, examines the history of punishment inside prisons and asks whether prisons can escape their historical connections to plantations and concentration camps.
The book traces constitutional challenges to prison conditions, including a 1960s case in Arkansas where prisoners challenged the practice of whipping. It documents the development of international standards for prisoner treatment, beginning with rules adopted by the League of Nations in 1934, and explores the impact of World War II, the United Nations, and the Civil Rights Movement on prison reform efforts.
Resnik has testified before the United States Senate on solitary confinement and submitted expert declarations to federal courts regarding prison conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. She co-authored reports on solitary confinement policies in U.S. prisons for the Arthur Liman Center and contributed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights report Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bars.

Other scholarship

Resnik has written extensively on:Federal courts and civil procedure: Her scholarship examines the role of federal courts, jurisdictional issues, class actions, arbitration, and access to justice.Representing Justice: Co-authored with Dennis E. Curtis, this 2011 book uses art and iconography to analyze how democracy has transformed courts and the concept of justice. The book won two PROSE Awards for excellence in social sciences and law, and the 2012 SCRIBES Award from the American Society of Legal Writers.Federalism and sovereignty: Research on the relationships among federal, state, and tribal courts, and the nature of federalism in the United States.Gender and law: Scholarship examining gender issues in the legal system, including women's rights in the criminal justice system and women judges.

Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law

In 1997, Resnik founded the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School, named after attorney Arthur Liman. The center supports:
As of summer 2025, more than 200 Yale Law School graduates have held Liman fellowships. In 2017, former Liman fellows established the Resnik-Curtis Fellowship in Public Interest Law in honor of Resnik and her late husband, Dennis Curtis.

Global Constitutional Law Seminar

From 2012 to 2022, Resnik chaired Yale Law School's Global Constitutional Law Seminar, part of the Gruber Program on Global Justice and Women's Rights. This annual private seminar brought together jurists from around the world to discuss challenges in constitutional adjudication. She edited volumes of readings for the seminar, including Weighing Judicial Authority and Urgency and Legitimacy, which were made available as free e-books.

Litigation

Resnik has occasionally served as a litigator. She argued Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpenter, decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2009, which addressed the collateral order doctrine in the context of attorney-client privilege. She also argued a 1987 case concerning the admission of women to the Rotary Club.

Honors and awards

Selected publications

Books

Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy, University of Chicago Press Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms, Yale University Press Federal Courts Stories, Foundation Press Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender, NYU Press

Selected articles

  • "The Capital Of And The Investments In Courts, State And Federal," New York University Law Review
  • "Lawyerless Litigants, Filing Fees, Transaction Costs, and the Federal Courts", Northwestern Law Review
  • "Seeing 'the Courts:' Managerial Judges, Empty Courtrooms, Chaotic Courthouses, and Judicial Legitimacy from the 1980s to the 2020s," Review of Litigation
  • "Managerial Judges," Harvard Law Review 96 : 374–448