Reva Siegel


Reva B. Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School. 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. She is currently writing on the role of social movement conflict in guiding constitutional change, addressing this question in recent articles on reproductive rights, originalism and the Second Amendment, the "de facto ERA," and the enforcement of Brown. Her publications include Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking ; The Constitution in 2020 ; and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law. Professor Siegel received her B.A., M.Phil, and J.D. from Yale University, clerked for Judge Spottswood William Robinson III on the United States [Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit|D.C. Circuit], and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is active in the American Society for Legal History, the Association of American Law Schools, the American Constitution Society, in the national organization and as faculty advisor of Yale's chapter.
She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.

Scholarship

One of her most notable works is "She the People: The Nineteenth Amendment, Sex Equality, Federalism, and the Family," 115 Harv. L. Rev. 947, which argues that the history leading up to the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment to [the United States Constitution], guaranteeing woman suffrage, should serve as the foundation for a more robust jurisprudence of sex equality.
Siegel's most recent work focuses on popular constitutionalism and Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, how social movements shape constitutional law, the rise of the New Right, and the popularization of antiabortion arguments that focus on protecting women.

Career

Siegel graduated from Yale Law School in 1986, where she was an editor of The Yale Law Journal. She joined the Yale faculty in 1994 after teaching at the Boalt Hall School of Law. She serves on the boards of the American Society for Legal History, the Center for WorkLife Law, and the Harvard [Law & Policy Review]. She is an active member of the American Constitution Society and faculty advisor to the ACS chapter at Yale Law School.

Selected works

Books

  • Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking
  • Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling .
  • The Constitution in 2020 , including an essay by Professors Siegel and Balkin on Remembering How to Do Equality and an essay co-authored with Robert Post on Democratic Constitutionalism
  • Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, co-edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon. Collection of 40 essays, including authored introductory essay, ''A Short History of Sexual Harassment''