Education

• Auburn University B.A.
• Indiana University Maurer School of Law J.D.

Courses

• Constitutional Law (B606)
• Federal Courts (B733)

Background

• Provost, IU Bloomington; Executive Vice President, Indiana University (2012-2021)
• Dean, IU Maurer School of Law (2003-2011)
• Earned a J.D. summa cum laude from Indiana University Maurer School of Law; elected to the Order of the Coif; and wrote for the Indiana Law Journal
• Clerk, Hon. Jesse Eschbach, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (1983-1985)
• President, Association of American Law Schools (2011-2012)

Biography

Lauren Robel is the Val Nolan Professor of Law Emerita at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where she served as Dean from 2002-2012. From 2012-2021, Robel served as Executive Vice President of Indiana University and Provost of the Bloomington campus. She joined the Maurer faculty in 1985 after clerking for the Honorable Jesse Eschbach at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She is an alumna of the Law School.

Robel received her J.D. from the Maurer School of Law in 1983 and her B.A. from Auburn University in 1978. Her scholarly work focuses on the role of federal courts and addresses issues such as procedural reform and sovereign immunity. Her articles have appeared in numerous leading law journals. She was a co-author of Federal Courts: Cases and Materials on Judicial Federalism and the Lawyering Process (LEXISNEXIS 2005), a casebook on federal jurisdiction written with Arthur Hellman. Robel has also been a visiting faculty member at Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), where she published a book, Les États des Noirs: Fédéralisme et question raciale aux États-unis, (Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), with Professor Elisabeth Zoller. In addition to her scholarship, Robel is a frequent participant in crafting amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court. She has spoken frequently on issues involving her scholarship and those involving the university and the First Amendment. 

She served as President of the Association of American Law Schools in 2011-2012, and as a member of its Executive Committee from 2006-2009. She is a member of the board of the American Bar Foundation; a founding member of the board of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement; and a member of the board of the National Survey of Student Engagement. She previously served as Chair of the Big Ten Academic Alliance.

A renowned teacher, Robel has been honored with the Leonard D. Fromm Public Interest Award twice, the Leon Wallace Teaching Award, and two Teaching Excellence Recognition Awards, among other recognitions.

Selected works

• FEDERAL COURTS: CASES AND MATERIALS ON JUDICIAL FEDERALISM AND THE LAWYERING PROCESS, 3rd ed. (with Arthur Hellman and David R. Stras). Providence, NJ: LexisNexis, 2013.
• Riding the Color Line: The Story of Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co., in FEDERAL COURT STORIES (Vicki Jackson and Judith Resnik, Eds.) New York: Foundation Press, 2010.
• FEDERAL COURTS: CASES AND MATERIALS ON JUDICIAL FEDERALISM AND THE LAWYERING PROCESS, 2nd ed. (with Arthur Hellman and David R. Stras). Newark: LexisNexis, 2009.
• Opening Our Classrooms Effectively to Foreign Graduate Students, 24 PENN STATE INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW 797 (2006).
• Sovereignty and Democracy: The States' Obligations to Their Citizens Under Federal Statutory Law, 78 Ind. L. J. 543 (2003)
• LES ÉTATS DES NOIRS: FEDERALISME ET QUESTION RACIALE AUX ÉTATS-UNIS, (Presses Universitaires de France, 2000) (with Elisabeth Zoller)
• The Myth of the Disposable Opinion, 85 Michigan Law Review 940-962 (1989)
• Fractured Procedure: The Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990, 46 Stanford Law Rev. 1447 (1994)
• Impermeable Federalism, Pragmatic Silence, and the Long Range Plan for the Federal Courts, 71 Indiana Law Journal 841 (1996).

Interests

• Federal jurisdiction
• Trial and appellate procedure

Related links

• IU Bloomington Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President Website
• Publications