Biography

Lauren Robel is the Val Nolan Professor of Law Emerita at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where she served as Dean from 2002-2012.  From 2012-2021, Robel served as Executive Vice President of Indiana University and Provost of the Bloomington campus.  She joined the Maurer faculty after clerking for the Honorable Jesse Eschbach at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 

Professor Robel regularly teaches Federal Courts, Constitutional Law, and Constitutional Litigation, and has led clinics in appellate litigation before the United States Court for the Seventh Circuit.  Robel’s scholarly work focuses on the role of federal courts and addresses issues such as procedural reform and sovereign immunity. Her articles have appeared in numerous leading law journals. She was a co-author of Federal Courts: Cases and Materials on Judicial Federalism and the Lawyering Process (LEXISNEXIS 2005), a casebook on federal jurisdiction written with Arthur Hellman. Robel has also been a visiting faculty member at Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), where she published a book, Les États des Noirs: Fédéralisme et question raciale aux États-unis, (Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), with Professor Elisabeth Zoller.  In addition to her scholarship, Robel is a frequent participant in crafting amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court. She has spoken frequently on issues involving her scholarship and those involving universities and the First Amendment. 

She served as President of the Association of American Law Schools in 2011-2012, and as a member of its Executive Committee from 2006-2009. She is a member of the board of the American Bar Foundation; a founding member of the board of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement; and a member of the board of the National Survey of Student Engagement.  She served as Chair of the Big Ten Academic Alliance from 2020-2021.

Publication

Books

• FEDERAL COURTS: CASES AND MATERIALS ON JUDICIAL FEDERALISM AND THE LAWYERING PROCESS (with Arthur Hellman), Lexis-Nexis 2005; 2d edition 2009 (with Arthur Hellman and David Stras) (with annual supplements).
• LES ÉTATS DES NOIRS: FEDERALISME ET QUESTION RACIALE AUX ÉTATS-UNIS, (Presses Universitaires de France, 2000) (with Elisabeth Zoller)

Representative Articles, Book Chapters, Essays

• The Myth of the Disposable Opinion, 85 Michigan Law Review 940-962 (1989).(Reprinted in G. Grossman, LAW BOOKS: FROM PARCHMENT TO COMPUTERS (Oxford Univ. Press 1994)).
• “Violent Pornography and the Law,” FOR ADULT USERS ONLY: THE DILEMMA OF VIOLENT PORNOGRAPHY. 178-197. Ed. Susan Gubar and Joan Hoff-Wilson. Indiana Univ. Press: 1989.
• Caseload and Judging, 1990 Brigham Young University Law Review 3 (1990) (symposium on the federal courts).
• The Politics of Crisis and the Federal Courts, 7 Ohio State J. of Dispute Resolution 115-137 (1991).
• Private Justice and the Federal Bench, 68 Ind. L. J. 891 (1993).
• Grass Roots Procedure: The Work of Advisory Groups Under the Civil Justice Reform Act, 59 Brooklyn Law Review 879 (1993) (symposium on civil justice reform).
• Fractured Procedure: The Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990, 46 Stanford Law Rev. 1447 (1994) (symposium on civil justice reform).
• Mandatory Disclosure and Local Abrogation: In  Search of a Theory for Optional Rules, 14 Rev. of Litigation 49 (1994) (symposium on the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure).
• Federal Court Supervision of State Criminal Justice Administration, 543 ANNALS AM. ACAD. POL. & SOC. SCI. 154 (1996) (with Joseph Hoffmann).
• Impermeable Federalism, Pragmatic Silence, and the Long Range Plan for the Federal Courts, 71 Indiana Law Journal 841 (1996).
• The Practice of Precedent: Anastasoff, Noncitation Rules, and the Meaning of Precedent in an Interpretive Community, 35 Ind. L. Rev. 399 (2002).
• Sovereignty and Democracy: The States’ Obligations to Their Citizens Under Federal Statutory Law, 78 Ind. L. J. 543 (2003) (symposium on Congressional Power in the Shadow of the Rehnquist Court).
• Riding the Color Line: The Story of Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co., in FEDERAL COURT STORIES, Ed. Vicki Jackson & Judith Resnik (2009).