Deborah Pearlstein

Cardozo School of Law

Deborah Pearlstein

Deborah Pearlstein is professor of law and co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. Before joining Cardozo, Pearlstein was an associate scholar in the Law and Public Affairs Program at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and held visiting appointments at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Georgetown University Law Center. Her scholarship on the Constitution’s separation of powers and U.S. foreign relations has been published widely in leading law journals and in the popular press, and has been the subject of repeated testimony before Congress on topics from war powers to executive branch oversight. She has served as chair of the AALS National Security Law Section, on the ABA's Advisory Committee on Law and National Security, and on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed Journal of National Security Law & Policy. Most recently, she was appointed to the U.S. State Department Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, a nine-member board of historians, political scientists, and international law experts who help ensure the timely declassification of government records surrounding major events in U.S. foreign policy.  A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Pearlstein clerked for Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, then for Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. Following her clerkships, she became a practicing human rights lawyer, earning the Voting Rights Award from the ACLU of Southern California for her litigation work following the 2000 presidential election.

Deborah Pearlstein

Writings & Appearances