The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law is pleased to announce the 2026–2027 recipients of the Steven M. Polan Fellowship in Constitutional Law and History: Kate Andrias, Olatunde Johnson, William Novak, Alice O’Brien, and Julie Suk. As Polan Fellows, these legal scholars and advocates will work to counter the U.S. Supreme Court’s embrace of originalism. They will use the Brennan Center’s platform and resources to develop research, writing, and other projects that support methods of constitutional interpretation grounded in the document’s democratic principles. As an alternative to originalism’s narrow and regressive focus on the past, the Polan Fellows will look to the Constitution’s core values of inclusiveness, expansiveness, and self-governance to build approaches to the founding document that better serve the American people.
The 2026–2027 Polan Fellows are:
- Kate Andrias is the Patricia D. and R. Paul Yetter Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she co-directs the Columbia Law School Center for Constitutional Governance and the Columbia Labor Lab. She served on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court, worked as Chief of Staff in President Obama’s Office of White House Counsel, clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and organized workers at SEIU. Her Polan Fellowship project is to develop a playbook for how “We the People” — citizens, civil society, elected officials, and other members of the political community — can engage in the practice of democratic constitutionalism and advance constitutional change beyond the courts.
- Olatunde Johnson is the Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Johnson served on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court, advised Senator Ted Kennedy as civil and constitutional rights counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens. As a Polan Fellow, she will work on a book and a series of articles on the Fourteenth Amendment’s essential role in advancing equal citizenship in a multiracial democracy, mapping a set of doctrinal, legislative, and advocacy strategies to counter the ongoing assault on this constitutional provision. Over the course of her fellowship year, Johnson will convene with civil society organizations to help the field develop new 14th Amendment theories to advance equal citizenship and remedy structural racism, and to safeguard Congress’s ability to legislate to advance economic and social equality.
- William Novak is the Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. He is the author of two Littleton-Griswold Prize-winning books, including New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. During his fellowship, he will engage in a project of research, writing, publication, and public outreach exploring conceptions of democracy from the Founding Era – from the very beginnings of the American revolutionary and Constitution-making periods to the First Congress – and what this democratic origin story means for us today.
- Alice O’Brien is the general counsel for the National Education Association (NEA), the country’s largest labor union. A lifetime union lawyer, O’Brien serves on the boards of Alliance for Justice and the American Constitution Society. During her Polan Fellowship, she will research the history of the understanding of state and federal constitutional rights related to education during the Second Founding period. Her project will make use of the NEA’s archives, which contain papers dating back to before the Civil War, and bring that material to the attention of scholars, advocates, and the public.
- Julie Suk is the Honorable Deborah A. Batts Distinguished Research Scholar and Professor of Law at Fordham School of Law. She is the author of three books, We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment; After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It; and The Shadow Court: Rescuing Democracy from the Supreme Court. Starting with the fact that the U.S. Constitution is the hardest in the world to amend, Suk will use her Polan Fellowship to review episodes of constitutional change from our history and synthesize their lessons for us today, suggesting peaceful, democratic paths out of what Suk describes as the “Constitutional Cage.”
The fellows’ work will complement the Brennan Center’s other projects combatting originalism, such as the Kohlberg Center on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Historians Council on the Constitution.
The fellowship is named in memory of Steven Marc Polan (1951–2023), a 1976 graduate of NYU School of Law. After many years of public service in New York City and New York state governments, Polan became a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, with a practice devoted to developing and improving public infrastructure.
Inspired by his lifelong commitment to democratic values, the Brennan Center launched this multiyear initiative to counter originalism and advance sounder alternative approaches to constitutional interpretation. This project, initiated by Polan during his lifetime, is made possible through the generous support of his family.
