[Photo: by Mike de Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken has been selected as the school’s next dean. She assumes the role as dean on July 1, replacing outgoing dean Robert Post. Gerken, 48, one of the country’s leading experts on constitutional and election law, will be the school’s first female dean.

Ms. Gerken is a former Jenner & Block associate, who worked there between 1996 and 2000, prior to joining Harvard Law School as a professor. She also has worked as an appellate lawyer in Washington, D.C. and served as a senior advisor to the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012.

At Yale Law School, she created and runs what the school called its most innovative clinic in local government law, the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project (SFALP). The clinic is a partnership between Yale Law School and the SF City Attorney’s Office in which students work with attorneys to “conceive, develop and litigate” public interest lawsuits… “that tackle problems with local dimensions but national effects,” according to Yale’s website.

A native of Bolton, MA, Ms. Gerken graduated from the Michigan Law in 1994 before clerking for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1995 term.