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Robin A. Lenhardt
HomeAcademicsColleges and SchoolsGraduate SchoolsSchool of LawSchool of Law FacultySchool of Law Faculty BiosSchool of Law Full-time FacultyRobin A. Lenhardt
Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Center on Race, Law and Justice
SSRN (academic papers)
Email: rlenhardt@law.fordham.edu
Office: Room 7-110
Faculty Assistant: Emma Mercer
Email: elmercer@law.fordham.edu
Robin A. Lenhardt is a Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the recently launched Center on Race, Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. Professor Lenhardt specializes in matters pertaining to race, family, and citizenship. In addition to Fordham, she has held teaching positions at Columbia Law School, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Chicago Law School. Before entering legal academia, Professor Lenhardt held a number of positions in the private and non-profit sectors. A law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and Judge Hugh Bownes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Professor Lenhardt was formerly a Counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where she was a member of the litigation team that defended the University of Michigan in the Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger affirmative action lawsuits. Professor Lenhardt received a Skadden Foundation Fellowship to work as a staff attorney for the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and was employed as an attorney advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. She later returned to DOJ to review civil rights issues as part of President Barack Obama's transition team. Professor Lenhardt's scholarship has appeared in numerous books and journals, including the California Law Review, the New York University Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review. Professor Lenhardt is currently co-editor of a book entitled Critical Race Judgements: U.S. Opinions on Race and Law that will be published by Cambridge University Press. She holds an A.B. degree in English from Brown University; a JD from Harvard Law School; an MPA from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government; and an LLM from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Critical Race Judgements: Rewritten U.S. Opinions on Race and Law (work-in-progress with Capers, Carbado & Onwuachi-Willig) (Cambridge University Press) (forthcoming)
Whitewashing the Family, __ Wisconsin L.Review (2020)
The Color of Kinship, 102 Iowa L. Rev. 2071 (2017)
Marriage as Black Citizenship?, 66 Hastings L. J. 101 (2015)
"According to Our Hearts" and Location: Toward a Structuralist Approach to the Study of Interracial Families, 16 Iowa J. Gender, Race & Justice 741 (2013)
Race Audits, 62 Hastings L. J. 1527 (2011)
Beyond Analogy: Perez v. Sharp, Antimiscegenation Law, and the Fight for Same-Sex Marriage, 96 Cal. L. Rev. 839 (2008)
Rethinking Work and Citizenship, 55 UCLA L. Rev. 1161 (2008) (with Jennifer Gordon)
Understanding the Mark: Race, Stigma, and Equality in Context, 79 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 803 (2004).
Law Review Symposium Contributions and Shorter Works.
The Racial Dimensions of Nonmarriage: A Response to Amanda Miller, Don't Force My Hand: Gender and Social Class Variation Relationship Negotiation, ___ Ariz. L. Rev. __ (2019) (forthcoming)
All the Women are White, All the Men are Black, But Some of Us Are Brave, 100 Years of Women Online Symposium, 87 Fordham Law Review Online, Article 13. (2019) (with Kimani Paul-Emile)
Should We Be Loving Loving, 25 Virginia J. Soc. Pol. 269 (2018)
Foreword for 5o Years of Loving Conference, 86 Fordham L. Rev. 2625 (2018) (with Hernandez & Paul-Emile)
Foreword: Moore Kinship, 85 Fordham L. Rev. 2551 (2017) (with Clare Huntington)
Race, Dignity, and the Right to Marry, 84 Fordham L. Rev. 53 (2015)
R.A. Lenhardt, Black Citizenship Through Marriage?: Reflections on the Moynihan Report at 50, 28 USC Interdisciplinary L. J. 347 (2016) (Reframing the Welfare Queen Symposium)
Race, Love, and Promise, Online Symposium Submission for Concurring Opinions Symposium on Martha Ertman's Love's Promises: How Formal and Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of Families (June 2015))
Structuring Race, Structuring Families, Online Symposium Submission for Balkinization Symposium on Clare Huntington'sFailure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships (Fall 2014)
Integrating Equal Marriage, 81 Fordham L. Rev. 761 (2012)
Localities of Equality Innovators, 7 Stanford C.R.-C.L. 265 (2011)
Forty Years of Loving, 76 Fordham L. Rev. 2669 (2008) (with E. Cooper, S. Foster, and S. Katyal)
Citizenship Talk: Bridging the Boundaries Between Immigration and Race Perspectives, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 2493 (2007) (with Jennifer Gordon)
Grave Building: A Tribute to Charles J. Ogletree. Jr. and His Evolving Legacy, 22 Harv. Blackletter L. J. 154 (2006).
Family Law as Racial Subordination and Inequality, The Oxford Handbook of Race and Law in the United States (Khiara Bridges, Devon Carbado & Emily Hough)
Moore v. City of East Cleveland Chapter in Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Opinions on Race and Law Capers, Carbado, Lenhardt & Onwuachi-Willig) (Cambridge University Press) (2019 Publication) (work-in-progress)
Perez v. Sharp and the Limits of Loving in Loving In a Post-Racial World: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Marriage (Kevin Maillard & Rose Cuison Villazor , eds., 2012)
The Story of Perez v. Sharp: Forgotten Lesson on Race, Law, and Marriage in Race Law Stories, (Devon W. Carbado & Rachel F. Moran, eds., 2008)
The Racial Subject in Legal Theory in The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics (Keith E. Whittington, et al., eds., 2008) (with Sheila Foster)
Policy Papers & Briefs
Conflict and Solidarity Between African American and Latino Immigrant Workers (prepared for the Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity at Berkeley Law School) (2007) (with Jennifer Gordon)
Litigation Material
Brief of Amici Curiae 53 Current Members of the Texas Senate and House of Representatives in Support of Respondents, Fisher v. Univ. of Texas (2016) (U.S. Supreme Court)
Brief of Amici Curiae 38 Members of the Texas State Senate and House of Representatives in Support of Respondents, Fisher v. Univ. of Texas (2013) (U.S. Supreme Court)
LLM, Georgetown University Law Center, 2004
JD, Harvard Law School, 1995
MPA, Harvard University, JFK School of Government, 1995
AB, Brown University, 1989