COIF-visitor-app

Pursuant to its historic purpose of promoting excellence in legal scholarship, The Order of
the Coif sponsors a program that enables chapters to bring distinguished members of the legal
profession to their campuses. Each year the Executive Committee will invite one or more
distinguished judges, academics, or practitioners to visit several law schools that have established
Coif chapters. The Distinguished Visitor spends two days at each of the institutions he or she
visits, participating in classroom lectures and seminars, meeting informally with faculty and student
groups, and giving one address open to the entire academic community. The purpose of the program
is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by fostering an exchange of ideas with individuals
whose experiences and ideas may be expected to stimulate discussion about important issues
confronting the legal profession.

The Executive Committee takes great pleasure in announcing that that Professor Heather Gerken will
serve as the 2012 Coif Distinguished Visitor.

Professor Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Here work falls
into two areas: constitutional law and election law. Professor Gerken’s research in constitutional
theory has centered on the values associated with minority-dominated institutions. She has
written about diversity, dissent, federalism, and the relationship between rights and structure.
Her most recent piece, “Federalism All the Way Down,” appeared as the Foreword in the
Harvard Law Review.

Professor Gerken’s work in election law has primarily centered on election policy and reform.
She has written on campaign finance, lobbying, districting, and election administration. Her
proposal that Congress establish a “Democracy Index” – a national ranking system of state election
performance – has been incorporated into bills by Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and
Representative Steve Israel. It has been the subject of several conferences and is the subject of her
new book, The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System is Failing and How to Fix it. She has
published in a variety of journals, including the the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law Review,
the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, Political Theory, Political Science Quarterly,
Roll Call, Legal Affairs, Legal Times, The New Republic, American Prospect Online, and
elsewhere.

She has served as a commentator on legal controversies for a number of media outlets, including
The New York Times, The New Yorker, the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe,
NPR, the Lehrer News Hour, Dan Rather Reports, CNN, MSNBC, the Rachel Maddow Show, and
NBC News with Tom Brokaw. Professor Gerken has testified on election law questions before
Congress and the Massachusetts state legislature. Professor Gerken won the teaching awards at
Harvard Law School and Yale Law School as well as the Green Bag Award for Exemplary Legal
Writing. In 2007 and 2008, she served as a senior adviser to the national election protection team
for Obama for America. Before entering the academy, Professor Gerken clerked for Judge
Stephen Reinhardt of the 9^th Circuit and Justice David Souter.

Any school with a chapter of The Order of the Coif may host a distinguished visitor Priority will be given
to those institutions that do not have extensive resources on which to draw for similar programs or that for
other reasons may have difficulty in doing so and which have not recently hosted a distinguished visitor.

The national office of the Order will provide an honorarium for the Coif Distinguished Visitor and will pay
for his or her transportation to the host school. The host school is responsible for the expense of his or her
meals, lodging, and local transportation. In addition, the host school undertakes to provide publicity for the
Visitor's lecture sufficient to bring it to the attention of all segments of the campus, the local professional
community, including bench, bar, and law students.

The national office of the Order issues invitations to the Distinguished Visitor and posts information
about the visitors on this website.

1. The Distinguished Visitors for the following academic year will be selected and chapters
notified by June 30.

2. Applications to host a Coif Lecture should be submitted by October 1. The national office, in
consultation with the Visitor, will then arrange a series of visits from among the schools that have
expressed an interest. Applicant schools should not communicate directly with the Distinguished Visitor.
Designated host schools will be notified of their selection no later than November 1.

3. Applications for designation as host school for a Coif Distinguished Visitor must be in writing and
contain:

Joint Host: ______________________________________________________________________

Name of Distinguished Visitor Sought: ________________________________________________

Proposed Dates (Include as many potential dates as possible for maximum flexibility)

__________________________________________________________________________________

Dean's Statement: I am acquainted with the obligations of a school undertaking the sponsorship
of an Order of the Coif Distinguished Visitor and state that the applicant school is willing and able to
discharge these obligations.

RETURN TO: Laura N. Gasaway
   National Secretary-Treasurer
   The Order of the Coif
   University of North Carolina
   Law Library, CB # 3385
   Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3385