harvard law review president list

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Harvard law review elects priscila coronado ’23 as its 136th president.

The Harvard Law Review has elected Priscila Coronado ’23 as its 136th president. Coronado succeeds Hassaan Shahawy ’22.

“Priscila is a rigorous scholar and a passionate advocate. From the start, she has impressed her fellow editors with her remarkable intelligence, profound humility, and deep commitment to service. Her values represent the very best of the Review. I cannot wait to see what Volume 136 will achieve under her inspiring leadership,” said Shahawy.

Coronado was born and raised in Downey, California, a suburb in southeast Los Angeles. The youngest daughter of two Mexican immigrants, Coronado became the first in her family to attend college. She graduated, magna cum laude, from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in three years, earning a B.A. in English with college honors, departmental honors, and Phi Beta Kappa. Coronado was the Community Advocacy Program coordinator at the Disability Rights Legal Center before beginning her J.D. She is also a member of La Alianza and First Class.

“Hassaan’s intellectual prowess and humility are unmatched. He was given the unenviable task of guiding the Review through an unpredictable and challenging year, but he served Volumes 135 and 136 with grace. I will do my best to follow in his footsteps and build on the work he did this year,” said Coronado.

The Law Review, founded in 1887 by future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, LL.B. 1887, is an entirely student-edited journal with the largest circulation of any law journal in the world. It is published monthly from November through June.

[Read a related Q&A with Priscila Coronado ’23 on Harvard Law Today]

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Organization & History

The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship. In addition, the Review aims to be an effective research tool for practicing lawyers and students, and to provide opportunities for its student members to develop their own editing and writing skills. The organization is independent of the Harvard Law School; student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions and, together with a professional business staff, carry out day-to-day operations. Its members are second- and third-year Harvard Law students who are selected after an annual writing competition.

The Review is published monthly from November through June, including a special Supreme Court issue each November and a Developments in the Law issue each April. The Review publishes articles, essays, and book reviews by outside authors — academics as well as judges and practitioners — alongside pieces by student editors, including Notes as well as comments on recent cases, legislation, and other legal developments. All pieces undergo a rigorous editorial process, and all student writing is unsigned. Authors interested in publishing in the Review are invited to submit manuscripts for consideration.

For more information about the history of the Harvard Law Review , see Erwin Griswold’s Glimpses of Its History (published in the 1987 Centennial Album of the Review ).

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Along with editors of the Columbia Law Review , the University of Pennsylvania Law Review , and The Yale Law Journal , Harvard Law Review editors compile The Bluebook , the definitive style guide for legal citation in the United States.

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Harvard Law Review Elects Apsara Iyer as 137th President

Apsara A. Iyer, a second-year law student at Harvard Law School, was elected the 137th president of the Harvard Law Review, becoming the first Indian American woman to hold the position.

The Law Review, founded in 1887, is among the oldest student-run legal scholarship publications. Previous editors of the organization include Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Ketanji Brown Jackson ’92, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as former President Barack Obama, who served as the review’s 104th leader .

In the Law School’s Jan. 30 press release, Priscila E. Coronado, Iyer’s predecessor, said the publication is “extremely lucky” to have Iyer at the helm.

“Apsara has changed the lives of many editors for the better, and I know she will continue to do so,” Coronado wrote. “From the start, she has impressed her fellow editors with her remarkable intelligence, thoughtfulness, warmth, and fierce advocacy.”

“I cannot wait to see what Volume 137 will achieve under her leadership,” she added.

Iyer grew up in Indiana and attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. She graduated from Yale in 2016, receiving a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Math as well as Spanish.

In an interview with The Crimson, Iyer discussed her interest in “the relationship between communities living around archaeological sites and the management of cultural heritage,” which began in high school and continued throughout college.

Her interest in understanding the “value of cultural heritage” led her to work in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, which tracks stolen works of art and other artifacts. She began working in the office in 2018 before attending the Law School, and she took a leave of absence after her first year studying law to return to the role.

Iyer joined the Harvard Law Review following a competitive process called “write-on,” where HLS students rigorously fact-check a document and provide commentary on a recent State or Supreme Court Case.

Iyer spoke highly of her experience and peers at the Law Review.

“What’s been so meaningful to me is that the Law Review has been an amazing community of incredibly talented, passionate people,” Iyer said. “And I feel like I’ve been able to be welcomed into this organization that’s filled with individuals who are so intelligent and so interested in different parts of the law.”

Iyer said that as Law Review president, she aims to include more editors in the process of reviewing and selecting articles and upholding the publication’s reputation for “high-quality” work.

“I think that right now I’m just focused on making sure we keep the lights on and everything going,” Iyer said.

Outside of the Law Review, Iyer has previously been involved in the Law School’s Harvard Human Rights Journal and the National Security Journal. She is also a member of the South Asian Law Students Association. In addition, she serves on the advisory committee for the Peabody Institute of Archaeology in Andover, Massachusetts.

Iyer is working on an independent paper with Law School professor Jacob E. Gersen on the destruction of cultural heritage as a type of tort — a class of civil wrongs involving injury or harm.

Iyer said she is a “nontraditional student” and is unsure of her plans after graduating from HLS.

“I hope to use the rest of my 2L and 3L years to figure out what parts of the law interest me more and do really good work there,” she said.

—Staff writer Jo B. Lemann can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @Jo_Lemann .

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter @neilhshah15 .

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Indian-american apsara iyer becomes president of harvard law review, 1st in publication’s 136-yr history.

​The Harvard Law Review was founded in 1887 and is among the oldest student-run legal scholarship publications.

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Harvard Law Review elects first Latina president

An "H" marks a gate into Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts January 20, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder Acquire Licensing Rights

• Coronado is first Latina elected as Harvard Law Review president
• Review's alumni include Barack Obama, Supreme Court justices

(Reuters) - The Harvard Law Review has named a California-born daughter of Mexican immigrants as its newest president, elevating a Latina to the top of one of the most prestigious U.S. law journals for the first time in its 135-year history.

Harvard Law School student Priscila Coronado, 24, said in an email Sunday that her experiences growing up as a Mexican American have informed her perspectives and that she wanted to "work hard to show how being a Latina is an important part of who I am."

Law reviews are staffed by the top students at U.S. law schools, who are often recruited for judicial clerkships and other prestigious jobs in the profession.

Harvard Law School student Priscila Coronado, the newly-elected president of the Harvard Law Review, appears in an undated handout photo. Priscila Coronado/Handout via REUTERS Acquire Licensing Rights

Legal and political luminaries who have worked at the Harvard Law Review include President Barack Obama, who was named the journal’s first Black president in 1990. Three serving members of the U.S. Supreme Court have served as editors.

Coronado was born and raised in Downey, California. She is the first in her family to attend college and earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California Los Angeles.

Her legal interests include education law and disability rights. When the academic year is done, she plans to work as a summer associate at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Coronado's election on Saturday came a year after the review selected Hassaan Shahawy to become the first Muslim to serve as president. In a statement, he called Coronado a "rigorous scholar and a passionate advocate."

Andrew Crespo, a Harvard law professor who as a student was elected the review's first Hispanic president in 2007, on Twitter congratulated Coronado in Spanish, writing: "¡Felicidades, Priscila!"

The review's first female president, Susan Estrich, was elected in 1977. It elected its first openly gay president in 2011 and named the first Black woman to the role in 2017.

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Nate Raymond reports on the federal judiciary and litigation. He can be reached at [email protected].

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First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review

By Fox Butterfield, Special To the New York Times

• Feb. 6, 1990

The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.

''The fact that I've been elected shows a lot of progress,'' Mr. Obama said today in an interview. ''It's encouraging.

''But it's important that stories like mine aren't used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don't get a chance,'' he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment.

What a Law Review Does

Law reviews, which are edited by students, play a double role at law schools, providing a chance for students to improve their legal research and writing, and at the same time offering judges and scholars a forum for new legal arguments. The Harvard Law Review is generally considered the most widely cited of the student law reviews.

On his goals in his new post, Mr. Obama said: ''I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I'm fairly opinionated about this. But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first among equals.''

Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on making the review a ''forum for debate,'' bringing in new writers and pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.

A President's Future

The president of the law review usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for a year, and then as a clerk for an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Obama said he planned to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing.

Professors and students at the law school reacted cautiously to Mr. Obama's selection. ''For better or for worse, people will view it as historically significant,'' said Prof. Randall Kennedy, who teaches contracts and race relations law. ''But I hope it won't overwhelm this individual student's achievement.''

Change in Selection System

Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review's 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.

Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

That system came under attack in the 1970's and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.

Harvard, like a number of other top law schools, no longer ranks its law students for any purpose including a guide to recruiters.

Blacks at Harvard: New High

Black enrollment at Harvard Law School, after a dip in the mid-1980's, has reached a record high this year, said Joyce Curll, the director of admissions. Of the 1,620 students in the three-year school, 12.5 percent this year are blacks, she said, and 14 percent of the first-year class are black. Nationwide enrollment by blacks in undergraduate colleges has dropped in recent years.

Mr. Obama succeeds Peter Yu, a first-generation Chinese-American, as president of The Law Review. After graduation, Mr. Yu plans to serve as a clerk for Chief Judge Patricia Wald on the of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Mr. Yu said Mr. Obama's election ''was a choice on the merits, but others may read something into it.''

The first female editor of The Harvard Law Review was Susan Estrich, in 1977, who recently resigned as a professor at Harvard Law School to take a similar post at the University of Southern California. Ms. Estrich was campaign manager for Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts in his campaign for the Presidency in 1988.

Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about the election of Barack Obama as president of the Harvard Law Review misidentified the United States court on which Patricia M. Wald is Chief Judge. It is the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, not for the Federal Circuit.

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