Kathryn Abrams

Kathryn Abrams is the Herma Hill Kay Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, a position she has held since July 2001. She is also Affiliated Faculty in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program and has served multiple terms as Associate Dean, including from 2003-2005, 1997-2003, and 1992-1996. Currently, she is Faculty Director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice. Prior to Berkeley, Abrams was Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Ethics & Public Life at Cornell University from 1997 to 2003, where she directed the Women’s Studies Program in 2000-2001 and served as Acting Director in 1998-1999. She held a professorship at Northwestern University School of Law from 1996 to 1997 and was Professor of Law (1991-1992), Associate Professor of Law (1985-1991) at Boston University School of Law. Her career began with a clerkship for Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals from 1984 to 1985. Abrams earned her B.A. magna cum laude in Government from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1980 and her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1984, serving as Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Abrams' research interests include feminist jurisprudence, voting rights and constitutional law, employment discrimination, minority vote dilution, campaign finance, law and the emotions, feminist methodology and epistemology, the jurisprudence of sexual harassment, and cultural and theoretical constructions of women’s agency. She has received major awards such as the Chancellor’s Award for Public Service (Community-Based Teaching) from UC Berkeley in 2018-19, Law and Public Affairs Fellowship at Princeton University in 2016-17, Faculty Bridging Grant from UC Berkeley Committee on Research in 2013-15, Anne Lukingbeal Award from Cornell Law School in 2000, and Nathan Magg Fellowship from Yale Law School in 1983-84. Key publications include her book Open Hand, Closed Fist: Practices of Undocumented Organizing in a Hostile State (University of California Press, 2022); edited volumes Legal Feminism Now (Issues in Legal Scholarship, 2011) and WSQ: Witness (with Irene Kacandes, 2008); and articles such as “Bridging Past and Future: Judge Frank Johnson and Minority Vote Suppression” (Alabama Law Review, 2020), “Emotions in the Mobilization of Rights” (Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 2011), “Who’s Afraid of Law and the Emotions?” (with Hila Keren, Minnesota Law Review, 2010), “Law in the Cultivation of Hope” (with Hila Keren, California Law Review, 2007), and “Fighting Fire with Fire: Rethinking the Role of Disgust in Hate Crimes” (California Law Review, 2002).

Professional Email: krabrams@law.berkeley.edu