CEDIS welcomes Joy Milligan and Bertrall Ross from Berkeley Law
CEDIS is pleased to welcome two distinguished international Academic Visitors to the NOVA Centre for the Study of Gender, Family, and the Law. Hosted by Professor Nausica Palazzo, their affiliation reflects CEDIS’s strong commitment to academic excellence and to fostering engagement with leading scholars from around the world. During their stay, they will contribute to the Centre’s intellectual life and deliver a SPEED Lunch Seminar on their book proposal looking at the exclusionary nature of the drafting process of the US Constitution (April 22, 2026).
Joy Milligan
Joy Milligan is a Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she researches and teaches on civil rights, constitutional law, the administrative state, legal history and civil procedure. Her scholarship is interdisciplinary, drawing on social science theory and methods, and has been published in the University of Chicago Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, UCLA Law Review, NYU Law Review, Annual Review of Law & Social Science, and the Journal of Legal Education, among others. She currently holds a Steven M. Polan Fellowship in Constitutional Law and History with the Brennan Center for Justice and is a past fellow of the American Academy in Berlin.
Before entering academia, Milligan practiced civil rights law at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., where she was a Skadden Fellow, and clerked for the Hon. A. Wallace Tashima of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She graduated magna cum laude from New York University Law School, where she was a Furman Scholar and Fellow, and an articles editor of the NYU Law Review. She earned a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence & Social Policy from UC Berkeley, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and an A.B. in Social Studies, magna cum laude, from Harvard-Radcliffe. Before attending law school, Milligan spent several years founding a non-profit bicycle recycling project in the northwest Dominican Republic.
Bertrall Ross
Bertrall Ross is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley where he teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, constitutional theory, election law, administrative law, and statutory interpretation.
Ross’s research is driven by a concern about democratic responsiveness and accountability, as well as the inclusion of marginalized communities in administrative and political processes. His past scholarship has been published in several books, law review, and peer review journals. Two of his articles were selected by the Yale, Harvard, Stanford Junior Faculty Forum.
Prior to re-joining the Berkeley Law faculty, Ross taught at the University of Virginia School of Law from 2021-2025 where he was the Justice Thurgood Marshall Professor of Law. Ross taught at Berkeley Law from 2010-2021 where he received the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence. He has also been awarded the Steven M. Polan Fellowship from the Brennan Center for Justice, the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, the Princeton University Law and Public Affairs Fellowship, the Columbia Law School Kellis Parker Academic Fellowship, and the Marshall Scholarship. Ross is currently serving on the Administrative Conference of the United States and served on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court in 2021.
Ross earned his undergraduate degree in international affairs and history from the University of Colorado, Boulder, his graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and his law degree from Yale Law School. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Hon. Myron Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
