Pamela S. Karlan

On May 6, 2020, Facebook appointed her to its content oversight board.

On December 4, 2019, Karlan—alongside law professors Noah Feldman, Michael Gerhardt, and Jonathan Turley—testified before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment in the Impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. She made a controversial statement delivered during the December 2019, impeachment hearing of President Trump, “Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article 2 [of the Constitution] does not give him the power to do anything he wants,” testified Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School. “The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.” Karlan apologized afterward.

On December 20, 2013, Karlan was appointed by the Obama administration to serve as the U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. The position did not require confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Karlan took up her post on January 13, 2014, and served for one year. For her work in implementing the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor, she received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the DOJ's highest award for employee performance.

Throughout her career, Karlan has been an advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court. She was mentioned as a potential candidate to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter when he retired in 2009.

Karlan told Politico in 2009, "It's no secret at all that I'm counted among the LGBT crowd". She has described herself as an example of "snarky, bisexual, Jewish women". Her partner is writer Viola Canales.

In 2003, she was appointed to the California Fair Political Practices Commission by Controller Steve Westly. Until 2005, she served as commissioner to help implement and enforce California’s campaign finance, lobbying, and conflict of interest laws.

Karlan has frequently commented on legal matters for PBS NewsHour. During the disputed 2000 presidential election, she appeared regularly in the news media to discuss its comportment with constitutional law. In the aftermath of the election, Karlan, Samuel Issacharoff, and Richard Pildes adapted two chapters from the law school casebook that they co-authored into a book entitled, When Elections Go Bad: The Law of Democracy and the Presidential Election of 2000.

From 1988 to 1998, Karlan taught law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she won the All-University Outstanding Teaching Award in 1995–96 and the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia's Outstanding Faculty Award in 1997. In 1998, Karlan joined the faculty of Stanford Law School. She is the school's Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law. In 2004, Karlan cofounded the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, through which students litigate live cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2002, Karlan won the school's prestigious John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching.

After her clerkships, Karlan worked as an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund from 1986 to 1988.

After graduation from law school, Karlan worked as a law clerk for former U.S. District Judge Abraham David Sofaer of the Southern District of New York from 1984 to 1985. She went on to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun the following year. In a 1995 oral history with Harold Koh, Blackmun revealed that his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick had been written primarily by Karlan. He said that Karlan "did a lot of very effective writing, and I owe a lot to her and her ability in getting that dissent out. She felt very strongly about it, and I think is correct in her approach to it. I think the dissent is correct."

Karlan earned her B.A. degree in history from Yale University in 1980, as well as an M.A. degree in history and J.D. degree in 1984. At Yale Law School, she served as an article and book reviews editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Pamela Susan Karlan (born February 1, 1959) is an American professor of law at Stanford Law School. A leading legal scholar on voting rights and political process, she served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights in the United States Department of Justice Civil Division from 2014 to 2015.