Ava Ayers

Biography

A.B., Vassar College
J.D., Georgetown Law

Ava Ayers graduated first in her class from Georgetown Law in 2005. She then clerked for the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor, now a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, during her term on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She also clerked for the Honorable Gerard Lynch on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

After clerking, Ayers worked for nine years in the office of the New York Attorney General, where she was a Senior Assistant Solicitor General. She served both as a supervisor and as lead counsel in various high-profile cases involving immigration law, states’ rights, constitutional rights, environmental law, and other issues.

Ayers is the author of A Student’s Guide to Law School, published by the University of Chicago Press, as well as articles on legal ethics, immigration law, federalism, and other subjects.

Publications

Sanctuary Without Resistance (forthcoming) (describing local and state government policies that, despite announcing noncooperation with federal immigration enforcement, avoid criticism of the federal government, and arguing that these policies implicitly.

The Impossibility of Local Police Reform, FORDHAM URBAN LAW J. 2023 (forthcoming) (explaining how the structure of local government and the distribution of knowledge and expertise at the local level makes transformational change in policing effectively impossible).

Missing Immigrants in the Rhetoric of Sanctuary, 2021 Wisconsin Law Review 473 (2021)

Link to Publication

Voting as Exclusion, 90 Fordham Law Review 373 (2021)

Link to Publication

Discriminatory Cooperative Federalism, 65 Villanova Law Review 1 (2020)

Link to Publication

Justice Sotomayor and the Sense of Respect, 81 Albany Law Rev. 721 (2018) (introduction to Justice Sotomayor’s address to Albany Law School students)

Federalism and the Right to Decide Who Decides, 63 Villanova Law Review 567 (2018)

Link to Publication

The Half-Virtuous Integrity of Atticus Finch, 86 Mississippi Law Journal 33 (2017)

Link to Publication

What if Legal Ethics Can't Be Reduced to a Maxim?, 26 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 1 (2013)

Link to Publication

Presentations

March 2023

Professor Ava Ayers was a discussant on “Remapping Democracy: Redistricting, Race, and Fair Elections in a Changing Legal Environment” sponsored by the Government Law Review on March 6, 2023.

October 2022

Professor Ava Ayers was a panelist on “Local Administrative Law” at Fordham Urban Law Journal’s Cooper-Walsh Colloqium on October 14, 2022.

Professor Ava Ayers was a panelist on a Screening and Panel Discussion of Rooted Out by Julie Casper Roth (documentary on two men denied a marriage license in Root, NY) on October 3, 2022.

Professor Ava Ayers was a panelist on “Screening and Panel Discussion of ROOTED OUT by Julie Casper Roth” at Proctors Theater on October 3, 2022.

September 2022

Professor Ava Ayers spoke on “The Supreme Court’s Legitimacy and the Stench of Politics” at Siena College on September 17, 2022.

July 2022

Professor Ava Ayers was a discussant on “Enforcement and Exclusion: Sovereignty and the Social Control of Migrants” at the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting on July 16, 2022.

Professor Ava Ayers was a panelist on “Legitimacy & Resistance, Identity & Exclusion: the Ambiguities of Citizenship” at the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting on July 16, 2022.

April 2022

Professor Ava Ayers was a panelist on “The Polarization of SCOTUS in the 2020-2021 Term” at Siena College on April 27, 2022.

February 2022

Professor Ava Ayers was a panelist on “Introduction to Voting Rights” for the Albany NAACP on February 24, 2022.

October 2021

Professor Ava Ayers was a panelist on “A Seat at the Table: Engaging Stakeholders to Advance Policing Reform” at the Webinar for the American Bar Association’s Legal Education Police Practices Consortium on October 6, 2021.