Mila Sohoni smiles when she talks about introducing eager 1Ls to the wondrous world of civil procedure.

Most law students start their studies with at least a basic grasp of what a contract is or what a crime is, says Sohoni, who joined the SLS faculty in June after 10 years teaching at the University of San Diego School of Law. “But before law school, they rarely, if ever, have had occasion to think much about civil procedure,” she says. “The class opens students’ eyes to the choices that our legal system makes, to things they never had to consider before law school—the rules and framework for how legal disputes are resolved in courts. That’s one reason I enjoy teaching it so much.”

Civil procedure, Sohoni observes, is arguably analogous to chemistry, her major at Harvard, where she enrolled at age 16 with plans to become a doctor. “There is a mechanism-oriented type of thinking that is at the core of both that really interests me,” she says.

Sohoni, who won awards for her teaching at the University of San Diego, focuses her scholarship on administrative law, federal courts, civil procedure, and legislation. She has become a leading voice in the ongoing debate over the constitutionality of the nationwide injunction and the availability of universal remedies under the Administrative Procedure Act. Her articles exploring the history and legal underpinnings of these remedies have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and elsewhere. In separate opinions, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson have each cited Sohoni’s papers.

Sohoni’s contributions to the law extend beyond her publications. She has served as a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States since 2022. In October, she was elected to the American Law Institute.

“A Force in the Classroom”

Growing up, Sohoni moved back and forth between India and the Bay Area, spending a good deal of time on or near the Stanford campus. “I went to Menlo-Atherton High School and I used to sell programs at the Stanford football games to fundraise for our school,” she recalls. “Both of my sisters went to Stanford and so I was on campus a lot, but I never imagined I’d be teaching here.”

Anne Joseph O’Connell, Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law, served as a commentator on an article Sohoni presented at the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum a decade ago and has followed her scholarship since. Sohoni’s 2022 Harvard Law Review article, “The Major Questions Quartet,” “stands out in a crowded field of scholarship,” O’Connell says. “I assigned it when I last taught Advanced Administrative Law. Students were thrilled when they got to discuss the article with her in one of our sessions. They remarked on her clear writing and oral presentation. She is a force in the classroom.”

A post-Harvard Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship to Cambridge University gave Sohoni the opportunity to research and write about big issues at the intersection of law, philosophy, and the sciences. “I ended up reading a lot about the law during that time and that really ignited my interest,” she says.

She started thinking she might be better suited for law than medicine. But first there would be a career detour.

After receiving her MPhil with distinction (first class), she landed a “dream job”: science correspondent for The Economist, based first in New York and then in London.

“It turns out that being a law professor is the best job in the world, but when I was at The Economist, I thought being a journalist was the best job in the world,” she says. She wrote dozens of articles—including two cover stories—on topics ranging from quantum mechanics to neuroscience. Because Economist readers “love to read about the American justice system,” she found herself occasionally covering legal issues and court cases, in addition to her science beat. “That further deepened my interest in law, and so ultimately I wound up back at Harvard for law school.”

“It turns out that being a law professor is the best job in the world.”

There, as an editor on the Harvard Law Review and the book reviews chair, Sohoni relished reading and debating legal scholarship with her classmates. She also took a public law workshop with professors Richard Fallon and Heather Gerken, now dean of Yale Law School. “The class introduced us to the classics of legal theory and also to new scholarship in the area of public law,” she says. Professor Fallon remembers a star student with a gift for original thinking and stylish writing.

“We could be discussing a text that I had taught a dozen times before, and Mila would offer an interesting, insightful observation that was quite unlike anything I had ever thought of or heard anyone else utter,” Fallon says. “It would push the conversation in a new direction. One of Mila’s very great gifts is to see familiar issues and problems from new angles that enable her to say illuminating things about them. Mila has now carried that gift into her scholarship. I should add that Mila is one of the most brilliant stylists I have ever encountered,” Fallon continues. “Even when deep into the intricacies of administrative law doctrine, her writing sparkles with riveting and amusing turns of phrase. I have rarely read one of her pieces without thinking, ‘I wish I could write like that!’” SL