Allison Orr Larsen

Alfred Wilson & Mary I.W. Lee Professor of Law and Director, Institute of the Bill of Rights Law

Degrees: J.D., University of Virginia; B.A., College of William and Mary
Email: [[amlarsen]]
Office phone: (757) 221-7985
Office location: Room 254D
Full resume: here (.pdf in new window)

Areas of Specialization

Administrative Law; Appellate Advocacy; Constitutional Law; Federal Courts; Legislation

Teaching Interests

Administrative Law; Constitutional Law; Statutory Interpretation

Representative Professional Activities and Achievements

Allison Orr Larsen is the Alfred Wilson & Mary I.W. Lee Professor of Law at William & Mary where she also directs the Institute for the Bill of Rights Law. Professor Larsen teaches courses in constitutional law, administrative law, and statutory interpretation. Since joining the William & Mary law faculty in 2010, Larsen has received many awards honoring her teaching and scholarship including: the university’s Alumni Fellowship Award, the Walter L. Williams Jr. Memorial Teaching Award, the 1L Professor of the Year Award, two university-wide Plumeri Awards, the inaugural McGlothlin Teaching Award and the state-wide Outstanding Faculty Award in the “Rising Star” category (the latter is Virginia’s highest faculty honor, awarded by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia).

Professor Larsen is a scholar of constitutional law and legal institutions, with a focus on how information dynamics affect both. Her work on fact-finding at the Supreme Court has been featured multiple times in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and was also the subject of her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2021. Larsen has published in the nation’s top law reviews, and her work has been cited by four different U.S. Courts of Appeals. She appeared with Stephen Colbert as a guest on The Colbert Report (Comedy Central) to discuss her scholarship on Supreme Court amicus briefs, a subject on which she also testified before the Presidential Commission on Supreme Court Reform.

Professor Larsen received her B.A. from William & Mary in 1999 and her law degree in 2004 from the University of Virginia where she graduated first in her class. After law school, Professor Larsen clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to joining the William & Mary faculty, Professor Larsen was an associate in the appellate practice group at O’Melveny and Myers in Washington DC.

Professor Larsen spent the fall of 2016 as a visiting scholar at Oxford University, and the fall of 2018 as the Daniel P.S. Paul Visiting Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School.

Click here to read about Professor Larsen testifying to the Senate about her research.

Click here to view SCHEV Award article in William & Mary News.

Click here to watch Professor Larsen on The Colbert Report.

Scholarly Publications

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