Heather Gerken is Professor of Law at Yale Law School where she specializes in election law, constitutional law, and civil procedure. Professor Gerken is one of the country's leading experts on voting rights and election law, the role of groups in the democratic process, and the relationship between diversity and democracy. A native of Massachusetts, Professor Gerken graduated from Princeton University, where she received her A.B. degree summa cum laude in 1991 and the University of Michigan Law School, where she received her J.D. summa cum laude in 1994. She then served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and for Justice David H. Souter of the United States Supreme Court, before entering private practice in Washington, D.C. She joined Harvard as Assistant Professor of Law in 2000 and was promoted to Professor of Law at Harvard in 2005. An acclaimed teacher, Professor Gerken was the first junior professor in the history of Harvard Law School to receive the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, awarded annually to Harvard Law School's outstanding instructor. Professor Gerken is the author of many publications, including "Second-Order Diversity and Disaggregated Democracy," 118 Harvard Law Review 1099 (2005); "Dissenting by Deciding," 56 Stanford Law Review 1745 (2005); "Lost in the Political Thicket: The Supreme Court, Election Law, and the Doctrinal Interregnum," 153 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 503 (2004); "The Costs and Causes of Minimalism in Voting Cases: Baker v. Carr and Its Progeny," 80 North Carolina Law Review 1411 (2002); and "Understanding the Right to an Undiluted Vote," 114 Harvard Law Review 1665 (2001). She is currently working on a book on the trans-substantive concept of "second-order diversity" in American public law.