Shirin Sinnar joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2012.  Her current scholarship focuses on the role of non-judicial institutions in protecting individual rights in the national security context.  Her most recent work explores the capacity of Inspectors General, internal watchdog institutions within federal agencies, to provide oversight of national security programs that affect civil rights and liberties.  Other research interests include comparative national security oversight, accountability mechanisms for domestic intelligence-gathering, and the impact of counterterrorism policies on U.S. immigrant communities.

Prior to her faculty appointment, Sinnar taught Legal Research and Writing and Federal Litigation to first-year law students as a Stanford Law Fellow.  She previously served as a public interest attorney with the Asian Law Caucus and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of San Francisco, where she represented individuals facing discrimination based on government national security policies and unlawful employment practices. Sinnar also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School (J.D. 2003), Cambridge University (M. Phil. International Relations 1999), and Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges (summa cum laude, A.B. History 1998).