Meera E. Deo
Meera E. Deo
Assistant Professor of Law
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles;
J.D., University of Michigan Law School;
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, with high honors
J.D., University of Michigan Law School;
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, with high honors
Phone: (619) 961-4227
E-mail: mdeo@tjsl.edu
Professor Deo is a Southern California native. As a law student and attorney, she was an intervening defendant and member of the legal team supporting affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger. Her research continues to focus on issues of diversity, affirmative action, race, inequality and higher education. Much of her published work is interdisciplinary in nature and utilizes empirical methods. She is currently Chair of the AALS Section on Law & the Social Sciences and an appointed Member of the California Commission on Access to Justice. Her recent work has been published in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, the Rutgers Race & the Law Review, and the Harvard Journal on Racial & Ethnic Justice. Her scholarship has been cited by legal advocates and policy-makers, including in a number of U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs filed in the affirmative action case Fisher v. Texas.
Before joining the faculty, Professor Deo practiced civil rights law with the ACLU National Legal Department in New York City, where she worked on impact litigation involving privacy and cyberspace law. She also was employed as the Staff Attorney for Women's Health and Director of the Breast Cancer Legal Project at the California Women's Law Center in Los Angeles. Professor Deo later perfected her skills in empirical research methods while earning a Ph.D. in Sociology. Her dissertation examined how organizational membership provides law students with various forms of social capital that can contribute to academic and professional success. While a doctoral candidate, Professor Deo received full-support fellowships from both the National Science Foundation and the Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation.
Courses include:
Civil Procedure I & II, Law & Society, and Scholarly Legal Writing
Scholarships
ARTICLES, BOOK CHAPTERS, AND ARTICLE-LENGTH WORKS
Separate, Unequal, and Seeking Support, 28 Harv. J. on Racial & Ethnic Just. 9 (2012)
The Social Capital Benefits of Peer Mentoring Relationships in Law School, 38 Ohio N.U. L. Rev. 305 (with Kimberly A. Griffin) (2011)
The Promise of Grutter: Diverse Interactions at the University of Michigan Law School, 17 Mich. J. Race & L. 63 (2011)
Paint by Number? How the Race & Gender of Law School Faculty Affect the First Year Curriculum, 29 Chicano-Latino L. Rev. 1 (2010) (first author, with Maria Woodruff and Rican Vue)
Struggles & Support: Diversity in U.S. Law Schools, 23 Nat’l. Black L.J. 71 (2010) (first author, with Walter R. Allen, A.T. Panter, Charles Daye, and Linda Wightman)
It Matters How and When You Ask: Self-Reported Race/Ethnicity of Incoming Law Students. 15 Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 51 (2009) (with A.T. Panter, Charles Daye, Walter R. Allen, and Linda Wightman)
Missing In Action: "Framing" Race on Prime Time Television, 35 Soc. Just. 145 (2008) (first author, with Christina Chin, Jenny J. Lee, Noriko Milman, and Nancy Wang Yuen)
Identifying Predictors of Law Student Life Satisfaction, 58 J. Legal Educ. 520 (2008) (with Nisha C. Gottfredson, A.T. Panter, Charles E. Daye, Walter T. Allen, and Linda F. Wightman)
India, Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society (2008) (edited by Richard T. Schaefer)
Without a Trace: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders in Prime Time Television, in Contemporary Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader (with Christina Chin, Jenny Lee, Noriko Milman, and Nancy Wang Yuen) (Min Zhou and J.V. Gatewood eds., New York University Press, 2nd ed. 2007)
Ebbs & Flows: The Courts in Racial Context, 8 Rutgers Race & L. Rev. 167 (2007)
Asian Pacific Americans in Prime Time: Still No Action (with Christina Chin, Jenny J. Lee, Noriko Milman, and Nancy Wang Yuen) (Asian American Justice Center 2006)
Asian Pacific Americans in Prime Time: Lights, Camera, and Little Action (with Christina Chin, Jenny J. Lee, Noriko Milman, and Nancy Yuen)( National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium 2005)
Presentations
Two Sides of a Coin: Safe Space and Segregation in Race/Ethnic-Specific Law Student Organizations , Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Annual Meeting, Cosmopolitan Hotel, Las Vegas, NV (November 16, 2012)
Expertise
Civil Rights
- Affirmative Action
- Race & Law / Race & Higher Education
