Wendy R. Weiser

Director, Democracy Program

Wendy Weiser directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a non-partisan think tank and public interest law center. She founded and directed the center’s Voting Rights and Elections Project, coordinating litigation, research, and advocacy efforts to enhance political participation and prevent voter disenfranchisement across the country. Her work and the work she directed protected the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of citizens in 2006, 2008, and 2010.

She has authored a number of nationally-recognized publications and articles on voting rights and election reform; litigated ground-breaking voting rights lawsuits; testified before both houses of Congress and in a variety of state legislatures; and provided policy and legislative drafting assistance to federal and state legislators and administrators across the country. She is a frequent public speaker and media contributor on democracy issues.

She has appeared on CNN, Fox News, Democracy Now!, and NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Diane Rehm Show, among other outlets; her political commentary has been published in the New York Times, Roll Call, the Hill, Foreign Affairs, Huffington Post, and elsewhere; and she is frequently quoted by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the National Journal, Politico, and other news outlets across the country. Previously, she directed the center’s Fair Courts Project, which seeks to preserve a fair and impartial judiciary. She also served as an Adjunct Professor at NYU School of Law, where she taught the Brennan Center Public Policy Advocacy Clinic.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Ms. Weiser was a senior attorney at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, where she worked on issues of access to the courts and domestic violence, a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and a law clerk to Judge Eugene H. Nickerson in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School and her B.A. from Yale College.