Elise C. Boddie

Associate Professor of Law

Elise C. Boddie teaches constitutional law, land use regulation, and state and local government law at New York Law School. Previously, she was a visiting assistant professor at Fordham Law School.

Professor Boddie entered academia after practicing civil rights litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF), where she was an associate director of litigation and directed LDF’s education program. She litigated at the trial and appellate level in cases involving affirmative action in higher education, employment, school desegregation, and economic justice and has argued in both the Eighth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals. She also has participated as amicus counsel in several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including Ricci v. DeStefano, Grutter v. Bollinger, and Adarand v. Mineta. She has appeared on CNBC Live, CourtTV, and the Tavis Smiley show and has made guest appearances on several radio programs. Professor Boddie also served on the Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s Labor & Employment Committee. In 2003, she was honored by the Chicago Black Women Lawyers’ Association for exceptional service to the organization.

Prior to joining LDF in 1999, Professor Boddie practiced corporate litigation in the New York office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP and was the first recipient of the Fried Frank/NAACP-LDF fellowship. She clerked for Judge Robert L. Carter in the Southern District of New York. She is an honors graduate of both Harvard Law School and Yale College and holds a masters degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Racial Territoriality, 58 UCLA LAW REVIEW (forthcoming, Dec. 2010)

Threatening Brown's Promise: Supreme Court Cases from Seattle and Louisville Could Undermine Local School Districts' Voluntary Efforts to Combat Segregation, guest blogger for the American Constitution Society's online Supreme Court preview at www.acsblog.org (with Anurima Bhargava), appearing September 26, 2007

An Insidious Attack on Affirmative Action, Chronicle of Higher Education, Point of View, July 1, 2005

Reclaiming the Promise of Brown: Saying No to Vouchers, National Bar Association Magazine, March-April 2004

Colorblind in One Eye: The Selective Colorblindness of the Bush Approach to Affirmative Action, Slate, Jan. 30, 2003

Affirmative Action: Showdown in the Supreme Court, The Crisis, March/April 2003

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

• Moderator, Rent Regulation: Should Governor Spitzer Enhance or Phase Out New York's Current System?, Fordham Law School, March 26, 2007New York Area Scholars Group, Nov. 6, 2009 (Racial Territoriality paper)
• Panelist, NAACP Town Hall, "From Brown to Bakke to Bollinger," Wilmington, DE, April 16, 2004
• Keynote Speaker, Specialty Bar Summit, New Jersey Bar Association, New Brunswick, NJ, March 2004
• Panelist, The Michigan Cases: What Was Decided?, Boston Bar Association, Boston, MA, Oct. 3, 2003