Daphna Renan

Daphna Renan is the Peter B. Munroe and Mary J. Munroe Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Her work focuses on presidential power and American constitutional democracy. Recognized for her teaching, mentorship, and scholarship, Renan has published articles in the Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Yale Law Journal.

At Radcliffe, Renan is collaborating with Nikolas Bowie on a nonfiction book that contests judicial supremacy, or the idea that the Supreme Court should have the final say on what the US Constitution allows. The book, titled Supremacy: How Rule by the Court Replaced Government by the People (Liveright, forthcoming), recovers a countervailing tradition of political constitutionalism in the United States, one rooted in antislavery abolitionism and Reconstruction, in which the American people speaking through Congress can define the Constitution democratically. The book will offer a testament to those who struggled to change our experience with the Constitution and a compass for how our own generation can build a more democratic society—one that involves the courts but does not bend to their perception of equality, liberty, or right.

A graduate of Yale Law School and Yale College, Renan served in the US Department of Justice in 2009–2012. She clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the US Supreme Court and Harry T. Edwards of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Renan and Bowie’s first collaboration, “The Separation-of-Powers Counterrevolution,” received a scholarship award from the American Bar Association.