Professor Kathleen Morris is the founder of the “We the Cities” Project and a Resident Scholar at the U.C. Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies (Berkeley IGS). “We the Cities” explores whether colleges and universities and foundations can help support local democracy and government by helping to construct educational bridges from communities into local government. The basic idea is to create a kind of “trade school” for democracy, law, and government, then actively recruit, educate, and prepare bright, community-minded constituents up and down California to join their local governments as entry-level employees. Her purpose is to connect communities to local democracy to help address the crisis in democracy and civic education we see unfolding across our nation.
Before joining Berkeley IGS, Professor Morris was a tenured professor at Golden Gate University Law School. She has also taught at Yale, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Davis, and Rutgers law schools. She co-founded (with Dean Heather Gerken) the clinic at Yale Law School known as the “San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project,” another local democracy building project. Professor Morris has a law degree from U.C. Berkeley, a Masters Degree in Politics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a B.A. from California State University, Northridge. After graduating U.C. Berkeley law school in 1997, Professor Morris clerked for Sidney R. Thomas, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Professor Morris has a national reputation for ground breaking scholarship in the areas of constitutional Law; state and local government law and litigation; public lawyering; and civic education. Her current research projects include A People’s Guide to American Democracy, Law, and Government, and Democracy’s Double Agents (U. Mich. J. L. Reform (2026)). Past published work includes Rebel Cities, Bully States: A New Preemption For An Anti-Racist, Pro-Democracy Localism, 65 Howard L.J. 225 (2021); Legal Education, Democracy, and the Urban Core, in Legal Scholarship for the Urban Core (2018); Cities Seeking Justice: Local Government Litigation in the Public Interest, in How Cities Will Save The World (2016); Expanding Local Enforcement Of State And Federal Consumer Protection Laws,40 Fordham Urban L. J. 1903 (2013); The Case for Local Constitutional Enforcement, 47 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 1 (2012); and San Francisco and the Rising Culture of Engagement in Local Public Law Offices, in Why The Local Matters: Federalism, Localism, and Public Interest Advocacy (Yale & Columbia 2010).
