The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law; Professor of History (by courtesy)
Serena Mayeri’s scholarship focuses on the historical impact of progressive and conservative social movements on legal and constitutional change.
Mayeri’s new book, Marital Privilege: Marriage, Inequality, and the Transformation of American Law (Yale University Press, 2025) examines the history of challenges to marriage’s primacy as a legal institution and a source of public and private benefits.
Her first book, Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2011) received the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association and the Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians.
Mayeri also writes about reproductive rights and justice, equality and democracy, and history’s role in constitutional discourse and litigation. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, and has co-authored amicus briefs in cases involving abortion rights, employment discrimination, immigration and family law.
Mayeri teaches courses in family law, employment discrimination, reproductive rights and justice, gender and the law, and legal history. She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of History, and is a Core Faculty member in the Program on Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS). She has served on the executive committees of GSWS and of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy. In 2016, Mayeri was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. In 2019, she received the Robert A. Gorman Award for Excellence in Teaching.
