Aya . Gruber
University of Colorado Law School
Professor Aya Gruber is the Ira C. Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law and Criminal Justice at the University of Colorado Law School and an expert on criminal law, violence against women, and critical theory. Prior to Colorado, Gruber was a professor of law at the University of Iowa and a founding faculty member at Florida International University Law School. Shortly after she joined the Colorado law faculty In 2012, the students honored her with the Outstanding New Faculty Member Award. In 2013, she delivered the Austin W. Scott, Jr. Lecture, a public lecture by a faculty member engaged in a significant scholarly project. Gruber received Gilbert Goldstein Fellowship for scholarship in 2015 and the Jules Milstein Award in 2017, given to the best recent faculty work of scholarship, for her article, A Provocative Defense and again in 2020 for her book, The Feminist War on Crime. Professor Gruber has been a fellow in the University's Center for Values and Social Policy since 2015. In 2017, Gruber was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, where she taught criminal law and a seminar on feminism and crime control. Professor Gruber received her B.A. in philosophy from U.C. Berkeley, summa cum laude and her law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor on the Harvard Women's Law Journal and Harvard International Law Journal and founder of the Interracial Law Students' Association. After law school, Professor Gruber clerked for U.S. District Court judge James L. King in Miami, Florida and then served as a felony trial attorney with the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. and the Federal Public Defender in Miami. Professor Gruber currently teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law and procedure, critical theory, feminism, and comparative/international law. Much of her scholarship focuses on feminist efforts to strengthen criminal law responses to crimes against women. Her widely taught and frequently cited articles combine insights from practicing as a public defender with extensive research to articulate a feminist critique of authoritarian laws on violence against women. Her debut monograph The Feminist War On Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women's Liberation in Mass Incarceration (U.C. Press 2020), tells the story how feminists, in their quest to secure women's protection from domestic violence and rape, became soldiers in the war on crime and contributors to mass incarceration. It sketches a path forward for young women, activists, and lawmakers to oppose violence against women without reinforcing the American prison state. PEN America called the book “an exciting and brave book that tackles the cause and effect between gender-based violence, mass incarceration, and a broken legal system.” In addition to her writing on gender and crime, Professor Gruber has written a book on comparative criminal procedure, articles on treaty law and human rights, and articles on criminal procedure and privacy. Her articles appear in leading journals, including Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, and Iowa Law Review. Her scholarship has been covered in publications including, the New York Times, Slate, The Guardian, Reason Magazine, the Harvard Law Review, and the Michigan Law Review. Professor Gruber was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 2016 and has been an adviser to ALI Model Penal Code sexual assault project since 2012. As a member of the University of Colorado's Boulder Faculty Assembly and a chair on the University's grievance committee, she has investigated high-profile campus sexual assault and harassment controversies. A frequent public speaker on criminal justice, Professor Gruber has appeared on PBS, Fox News, ABC, episodes of 48 hours, and is quoted in various news outlets, including the New Yorker, Slate, and the New York Times. In 2023, she was featured in the MSNBC film The Recall: Reframed, which takes a critical look at the recall of Judge Aaron Persky who presided over the infamous Brock Turner case.
04/23
