Larry Kramer
Professor of Law (on leave)
Biography
Larry Kramer is president of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a position he took up in September 2012. He is on leave from the Stanford Law School faculty until 2014. He joined Stanford Law School in 2004 as Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean. As the school’s 12th dean, he spearheaded significant educational reforms, including dramatically expanding joint degree programs as part of a multidisciplinary approach to legal studies, enlarging the clinical education program to promote reflective lawyering, revamping programs to foster a public service ethos, and building the international law program to support a growing emphasis on globalization in legal practice.
Professor Kramer has written and taught in such varied fields as constitutional law, conflict of laws, civil procedure, federalism and its history, and the role of courts in society. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Law Institute. In December 2008, Equal Justice Works named him to its Board of Directors. He has appointments (by courtesy) with the Stanford University Department of History and with the Graduate School of Business. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he served as Associate Dean for Research and Academics and Russell D. Niles Professor of Law at New York University School of Law; professor of law at the University of Chicago and University of Michigan law schools; and consultant for Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP. Early in his career, Professor Kramer clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.