M. Elizabeth Magill

Elizabeth (Liz) Magill is Professor of Law at the Penn Carey Law School, a position she has held since 2022. Professor Magill was Penn’s 9th President until December 2023. She came to Penn after serving for three years as the Executive Vice President and Provost at the University of Virginia, the first woman to hold that position. Prior to that, she was the Richard E. Lang Professor and Dean of Stanford Law School for seven years. Before joining Stanford, she was on the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law for 15 years. Magill’s leadership at UVA and Stanford brought transformative changes to both institutions.

An award-winning scholar of administrative and constitutional law, Magill is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute. A member of the Board of Trustees of the National Constitution Center, she has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, held a fellowship in the Law and Public Affairs Program at Princeton University, and was the Thomas Jefferson visiting professor at Downing College, Cambridge University.

Prior to her career in higher education, Magill acquired experience working in politics and the U.S. Supreme Court. After completing her bachelor’s degree in history at Yale University, Magill served as a senior legislative assistant for energy and natural resources for U.S. Senator Kent Conrad, a position she held for four years. She left Capitol Hill to attend UVA’s School of Law, where she was articles development editor of the Virginia Law Review. After graduating in 1995, Magill clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.