Heather Elliott currently teaches Civil Procedure, Land Use Law, and Water Law. She also regularly teaches Introduction to the Study of Law and Legislation & Regulation.
Professor Elliott is a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and to Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. From 2003-2005, she was an appellate litigation associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP in Washington, DC, where she wrote briefs to the United States Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous federal and state intermediate appellate courts in cases involving constitutional law, bankruptcy, Indian law, administrative law, and environmental law.
She received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she was an articles editor for the Ecology Law Quarterly, earned an Environmental Law Certificate, and was elected to Order of the Coif. She earned M.A. and M.Phil. degrees in political science at Yale University and graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a B.A. in political science and philosophy.
Professor Elliott’s scholarship has two focuses: the role of courts and agencies in a democratic society, and Alabama water law & policy. She studied the latter from 2014 to 2016 under a grant from the United States Geological Survey, and a book arising from the study is forthcoming from the University of Alabama Press.
Representative Publications:
Alabama Water Law & Policy: A Comparative Treatise (University of Alabama Press, under submission) (funded with grants from the Alabama Water Resources Research Institute, a program of the United States Geological Survey, and from the Alabama Water Institute at the University of Alabama)
Associations and Cities as (Forbidden) Pure Private Attorneys General, 61 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1329 (2020)
Gorsuch v. The Administrative State, 70 Ala. L. Rev. 703 (2019)
Justice Gorsuch’s Would-Be War on Chevron, 21 Green Bag 2d __ (forthcoming 2018)
The Failings of Alabama Water Law, 68 Ala. L. Rev. 759 (2017)
Does the Supreme Court Ignore Standing Problems to Reach The Merits? Evidence (or Lack Thereof) from the Roberts Court, 23 Wm. & Mary Bill of Rights J. 189 (2014)
Federalism Standing, 65 Ala. L. Rev. 435 (2013)
Standing Lessons: What We Can Learn When Conservative Plaintiffs Lose Under Article III Standing Doctrine, 87 Ind. L.J. 551 (2012)
Congress’s Inability to Solve Standing Problems, 91 B. U. L. Rev. 159 (2011)
The Functions of Standing, 61 Stan. L. Rev. 459 (2008)