Portia Pedro is a Ph.D. in Law candidate at Yale. Portia's work systematizes the study of civil procedure. She analyzes the ways that judges use decisionmaking processes to navigate the tensions between law and equity, standards and rules, and rule of law versus individualized justice. Her projects begin with something akin to an archaeology of the procedure of procedure. She questions how judges make procedural decisions, how procedural law develops, how judicial incentives affect procedural determinations, and how the design of federal courts and judicial relationships with other institutions affect procedure. This research informs her proposals for how courts should balance different competing concerns and limited judicial resources.
Portia holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in International Development Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. During law school, she served as Treasurer and Vice President of the Harvard Law Review. Prior to her doctoral studies, Portia served as a clerk to the Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr., of the Third Circuit. As a member of the New York State Bar, she practiced at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP as a litigation associate in New York, and she practiced as a John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at Gibbons P.C. in Newark, New Jersey.