Elise Boddie, a nationally recognized expert in civil rights, was
previously the director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund. She is a frequent public speaker
the author of several articles. She holds a master's degree in public
policy in addition to her law degree.
Boddie is a professor of law, Henry Rutgers University
Professor, and Judge Robert L. Carter Scholar. She teaches Constitutional Law, Civil Rights, and state and local government law.
Before joining the Rutgers faculty, she was the director of litigation
for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). She
supervised LDF's nationwide litigation program, including its advocacy
in several major Supreme Court and federal appellate cases involving
voting rights, affirmative action, and fair housing. From 1999-2005,
she litigated affirmative action, employment, economic justice, and
school desegregation cases in federal district courts and in the courts
of appeals. During this period, she served as LDF's director of education and as an associate director of litigation.
Professor Boddie received her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School and her
B.A. cum laude from Yale. She also holds a master's degree in public
policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Following a clerkship for Judge Robert L. Carter in the Southern
District of New York, she litigated at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver
& Jacobson in its New York office as the first recipient of the
Fried, Frank/LDF fellowship. She has also taught at New York Law
School and at Fordham Law School, as a visiting assistant professor.
In
2012, the Law and Society Association awarded her the John Hope Franklin
Prize for her article, "Racial Territoriality," which appeared in the UCLA Law Review. She has also published in the Vanderbilt Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Harvard Law Review Forum, the UCLA Law Review Discourse, and the Iowa Law Review Bulletin. Her commentary has appeared in the New York Times, SCOTUSblog, Slate,
the Huffington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She is a
frequent public speaker and has appeared on MSNBC, NBC Nightly News,
Democracy Now, and National Public Radio, among other television and
radio programs.
Boddie is a member of the national board of the American Constitution
Society, the board of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, and
the steering committee of the National Coalition on School Diversity. She coordinated the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Policy Working
Group for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. She serves on
the Rutgers-Newark Chancellor's Commission on Diversity and
Transformation and has served on the boards of the North Star Fund, the
Passaic County Legal Aid Society, Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan New
Jersey, on the Association of the Bar of the City of New York's Labor and Employment Law Committee, and on a blue ribbon task force convened
by the Montclair, New Jersey, school superintendent to promote
integration in the local public schools.
