Anya Bernstein

Anya Bernstein graduated in 2010 from Yale Law School, where she spent much of her time working at the Civil Liberties & National Security Clinic. Following law school, she clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Anya received a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Chicago in 2007. Her dissertation, Why “Taiwan is Too Democratic”: Administration, Legitimation, and Political Participation in Taipei, documented how democracy fails to legitimate either political projects or laws in contemporary Taiwan, and explored other means of legitimation used by Taiwanese government administrators and political activists. She earned her B.A. from Columbia University in 1996.

Anya’s research and teaching interests focus around the organization of the state and its relation to its subjects; they include administrative law, national security, immigration, the relation of law and culture, and legality and political culture in Greater China.