Carolyn Shapiro is the founder and co-director of Chicago-Kent's Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States (ISCOTUS). Her scholarship is largely focused on the Supreme Court, its relationship to other courts and institutions, and its role in our constitutional democracy. She teaches classes in legislation and statutory interpretation, constitutional law, employment law, and public interest law and policy.
From 2014 through mid-2016, Carolyn took a leave of absence from Chicago-Kent to serve as Illinois solicitor general. She has argued cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Seventh Circuit, the Illinois Supreme Court, and the Illinois Appellate Courts.
Carolyn Shapiro blogs at ISCOTUSnow (which she also co-edits) and on the Chicago-Kent Faculty Blog and CK Now, and she also posts on Huffington Post and as a guest blogger at the American Constitution Society Blog. Professor Shapiro is also a member of the Board of Advisors for the Chicago Lawyers' Chapter of the American Constitution Society.
She earned a B.A. with general and special honors in English from the University of Chicago, an M.A. from the University of Chicago Harris Graduate School of Public Policy, and a J.D. (high honors) from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was articles editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Carolyn was a law clerk for then-Chief Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the United States Supreme Court.
Jonathan Miller is an experienced litigator and government attorney who has committed his career to public interest endeavors. As the Chief Program Officer of Public Rights Project, Jon oversees an active docket of litigation, amicus writing, and other advocacy. His portfolio has included litigation challenging the Trump administration's deployment of federal agents to Portland, Oregon as well as amicus briefs defending worker protections and eviction moratoriums implemented during the pandemic.
Prior to joining PRP, Jon served as the Chief of the Public Protection & Advocacy Bureau in the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. In that role, he led a 150-person team engaged in investigations, litigation, and other advocacy in the areas of civil rights, consumer protection, and workers rights. He was co-counsel with Attorney General Healey in a successful challenge of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and helped lead a team that secured more than $100 million of consumer relief in an enforcement action against a subprime lender following the financial crisis of the late 2000s.
Jon’s portfolio of work has included a wide range of matters from those brought on behalf of individuals facing housing discrimination or violation of their civil rights to U.S. Supreme Court advocacy on national topics such as affirmative action, reproductive rights, and marriage equality. In addition to Bureau Chief, Jon served as both an Assistant Attorney General in and Chief of the Civil Rights Division.
Most recently, Jon participated in or oversaw Massachusetts’s cases challenging the travel bans, the termination of the DACA program, regulations that would permit employers to deny contraceptive coverage to their workers, and several actions by the Department of Education relating to for-profit schools. Eager to find creative solutions to difficult problems, Jon also helped to lead an initiative partnering with the Massachusetts Medical Society to develop instructional materials and other information for medical providers to engage in gun safety conversations with their patients.
Throughout his career, Jon has been committed to teaching students and other lawyers. He is a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. Jon graduated from Dartmouth College, where he played baseball, and Columbia Law School. He lives in the Boston area with his family.
Terri Gerstein is the Director of the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative at the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She was recently the Director of the Project on State and Local Enforcement at the Harvard Law School Center for Labor and a Just Economy, and was a Senior Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. Previously, she was an Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow, and worked for over 17 years enforcing labor laws in New York State, including as the Labor Bureau Chief for the New York State Attorney General’s Office, and as a Deputy Commissioner in the New York State Department of Labor. Before her government service, Terri was a nonprofit lawyer in Miami, Florida, where she represented immigrant workers and also co-hosted a Spanish language radio show on workers’ rights.
Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The Nation, The Guardian, The Hill, The American Prospect, The National Law Journal, Route Fifty, and the Daily News, among others. She has also appeared on Democracy Now, Univision and Telemundo. She’s a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
