Melissa Murray honored by National Association of Women Lawyers
The National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) has named constitutional law expert Melissa Murray a recipient of the 2025 Arabella Babb Mansfield Award, the organization’s highest honor, named for the first woman admitted to the bar in the United States. Murray, who is Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, was honored alongside Professor Leah Litman of the University of Michigan School of Law and Professor Kate Shaw of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, who co-host the podcast Strict Scrutiny with Murray.
Founded in 2019 by the three professors, Strict Scrutiny provides incisive and irreverent analysis of US Supreme Court cases and news about the Court. The Mansfield award recognizes the honorees’ “significant contributions to public understanding of the US Supreme Court and legal culture as constitutional law scholars and for their influential work on the Strict Scrutiny podcast,” according to the NAWL announcement.
Murray’s award represents the second time in two years that an Law faculty member has received the Mansfield Award. In 2023, NAWL honored , Margaret B. Hoppin Professor of Law, for her work promoting civil rights through advocacy, litigation, scholarship, and teaching.
Murray, the faculty director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center, is a leading expert in family law, constitutional law, and reproductive rights and justice. Her award-winning research focuses on the legal regulation of intimate life and encompasses such topics as the regulation of sex and sexuality, marriage and its alternatives, the marriage equality debate, the legal recognition of caregiving, and reproductive rights and justice. She is an author of Cases on Reproductive Rights and Justice, the first casebook to cover the field of reproductive rights and justice, and a co-editor of Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories.
In addition to podcasting, Murray has written for popular publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and The Nation, and has offered commentary for media outlets that include NPR, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and PBS. Before joining the Law faculty, Murray was Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she received the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction and served as interim dean.
Archer, the 2023 recipient of the Mansfield Award, is a leading expert in civil rights, civil liberties, and racial justice. She has served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) since 2021 and recently authored the bestselling Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality. At Law, she is associate dean of experiential education and clinical programs and director of clinical and advocacy programs.
