Elise Boddie

Professor of Law, Henry Rutgers University Professor, Robert L. Carter Scholar, Rutgers Law School

Elise Boddie is a Henry Rutgers University Professor, Professor of Law and Judge Robert L. Carter Scholar at Rutgers University. She teaches courses on constitutional law, civil rights, and state and local government law. She has been published in numerous journals, including the Columbia Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, and the Harvard Law Review Forum.

Previously, Boddie was the Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). She oversaw its nationwide litigation program, including its advocacy in major U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate cases involving voting rights, affirmative action, and fair housing. As Director of Education and an Associate Director of Litigation at LDF, she litigated affirmative action, employment, economic justice, and school desegregation cases in federal district courts and in federal courts of appeals.

Earlier in her career, Boddie litigated at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson as a fellow. She also taught at New York and Fordham Law Schools.

Boddie is the founder and Executive Director of The Inclusion Project at Rutgers, a founding trustee of the New Jersey Coalition for Diverse and Inclusive Schools, and a board member of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. She served on the Rutgers-Newark Chancellor's Commission on Diversity and Transformation and on the steering committee of the National Coalition on School Diversity. She ran the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Policy Working Group in Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. She was elected to The American Law Institute in 2017. She has been a guest on MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, Democracy Now and National Public Radio, among other television and radio programs.

Boddie received her J.D. cum laude and M.P.P. from Harvard and a B.A. in economics and political science cum laude from Yale. She clerked for the Hon. Robert L. Carter in the Southern District of New York.