U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch recognized Stanford Law School Professor Pamela S. Karlan on October 21 with the John Marshall Award at the 63^rd annual Attorney General’s Awards Ceremony in Washington, D.C. John Marshall Awards are the highest awards offered by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to attorneys for contributions and excellence in specialized areas of legal performance.

Karlan recently returned from a two-year leave from Stanford Law School in order to work on DOJ projects in the nation’s capital. She was part of a team honored with a John Marshall Award for Providing Legal Advice for guiding the department to its new position regarding Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination due to gender identity. The award description noted, “Transgender individuals are among the most marginalized in our society, and thus they are sorely in need of the protections of federal antidiscrimination law. Consequently, the significance of the department’s change in position cannot be overstated.”

Last year then-Attorney General Eric Holder presented her with the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, which is the DOJ’s highest award for employee performance, as part of the 30-person team handling the implementation of U.S. v. Windsor, which struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, ending discrimination against same-sex couples in the more than 1,000 federal laws in which marital status is a relevant consideration. Two of the other members of that team were SLS alumni, Steven Siger, JD ‘08, who was chief of staff at the Office of Legal Policy and Eric Feigin, JD ‘05, who was assistant to the solicitor general.

Karlan is the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. She is one of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, and she is the co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles.