Biography
Shirin Sinnar joined the Stanford Law faculty in 2012. Her scholarship focuses on the legal treatment of political violence, the procedural dimensions of civil rights litigation, and the role of institutions in protecting individual rights and democratic values in the national security context. Her recent work assesses legal responses to hate crimes and domestic and international terrorism under U.S. law. She has also written on the capacity of courts, Inspectors General, and civil rights offices to monitor and oversee national security conduct. Her articles have been published in the California Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and other journals. In 2017, she was the co-recipient of the inaugural Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship for her article, The Lost Story of Iqbal.
Sinnar’s commentaries have also appeared in popular media including the Washington Post, USA Today, and Slate. Appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom, Sinnar served for two years on the California Commission on the State of Hate, a commission to assess data, support victims, and make policy recommendations related to hate crimes. In March 2021, she testified on anti-Asian hate violence before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. She is a member of the American Law Institute, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the editorial board of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy.
