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Retired Federal Judge Nancy Gertner is a graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School, where she was an editor on The Yale Law Journal, also receiving her M.A. in Political Science at Yale University. She was appointed to the United States District Court (D. Mass.) in 1994 by President Clinton and prior to 1994, Gertner was a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer in Massachusetts. She retired from the federal bench in 2011 to join the faculty at Harvard Law School. Gertner is the Managing Director of the MGH Center for Law Brain and Behavior.
Gertner was named one of “The Most Influential Lawyers of the Past 25 Years” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. She has received numerous awards, including the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award, Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the American Bar Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession, the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Hennessey Award for Judicial Excellence, and the National Association of Women Lawyers’ Arabella Babb Mansfield Award. Additionally, she was a Commissioner on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, and has written and spoken widely on various legal issues, appearing as a keynote speaker, panelist or lecturer concerning civil rights, civil liberties, employment, criminal justice and procedural issues, throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.