Take Back the Court Foundation
The Take Back the Court Foundation is the 501(c)(3) public charity affiliate to Take Back the Court Action Fund. The Foundation’s mission is to inform the public about the danger the Supreme Court poses to democracy and about the viability of Court expansion. The Foundation conducts research related to the Supreme Court and options for reform and engages in public education about the importance of the Supreme Court and Court expansion. You can learn more about the work of the Foundation and support its mission here.
The Take Back the Court Foundation Advisory Board is made up of academics, activists, and other leaders:
Heather McGhee (co-Chair)
Heather McGhee serves as Chair of the Color of Change Board of Directors and recently released her first book, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together”. She is a frequent contributor to NBC News and her writings can be found across a number of nationally-recognized news publications including The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR. McGhee holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and earned her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
Mark Tushnet (co-Chair)
Harvard Law SchoolMark Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Professor Tushnet, who graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law. His research includes studies examining (skeptically) the practice of judicial review in the United States and around the world.
W. Kamau Bell
CNN host & ACLU Ambassador for Racial JusticeW. Kamau Bell is a sociopolitical comedian who is the host and executive producer of the Emmy Award winning CNN docu-series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell. He also recently debuted a stand-up comedy special on Netflix, directed the critically-acclaimed documentary Cultureshock: Chris Rock’s Bring the Pain, and has hosted three critically-acclaimed podcasts. Kamau’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, CNN.com, Salon, The LA Review of Books, and The Establishment.
Carol Anderson
Emory UniversityCarol Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Professor Anderson’s research and teaching focus on public policy; particularly the ways that domestic and international policies intersect through the issues of race, justice and equality in the United States.
Annalien De Dijn
Utrecht UniversityAnnelien de Dijn is Professor of History at Utrecht University. De Dijn obtained her PhD in 2005 at the University of Leuven. She then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, U.C. Berkeley and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. From 2011 to 2017 she worked at the University of Amsterdam as assistant professor.
Anna Galland
Anna Galland is a progressive strategist and organizer. Previously, she spent over a decade at MoveOn Civic Action, including 7 years as Executive Director. She dramatically grew MoveOn’s footprint and impact in a turbulent political era, playing a significant role in flipping the House in 2018; defending access to health care for millions of people; protecting democracy against accelerating assaults; and fighting for the dignity and safety of immigrants. Her work in national media has included numerous appearances on MSNBC, CNN, and CSPAN. She serves as chair of the national MoveOn board, and as a member of the boards of Public Citizen and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Alicia Garza
Black Lives Matter (co-Founder)Alicia Garza is an Oakland-based organizer, writer, public speaker and freedom dreamer who is currently the Special Projects Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the nation’s leading voice for dignity and fairness for the millions of domestic workers in the United States. Garza also co-founded the Black Lives Matter network and her articles and interviews have been featured in Time, Mic, The Guardian, Elle.com, Essence, Democracy Now!, and The New York Times.
Nancy Gertner
Harvard Law SchoolNancy Gertner was a United States District Court Judge (D. Mass.) from 1994-2011. Prior to 1994, Judge Gertner was a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer in Massachusetts. She retired from the federal bench to join the faculty at Harvard Law School. She was also a Commissioner on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. Named one of “The Most Influential Lawyers of the Past 25 Years” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, she has published widely on sentencing, discrimination, forensic evidence, women’s rights, the jury system, and the Supreme Court. Judge Gertner has received numerous awards, including the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award, Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the American Bar Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession, the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Hennessey Award for Judicial Excellence, and the National Association of Women Lawyers’ Arabella Babb Mansfield Award.
Paul Henderson
San Francisco Department of Police AccountabilityPaul Henderson is a nationally recognized speaker, veteran prosecutor and champion for social justice. Henderson has spent his entire professional career working in public service for the city of San Francisco and most recently was appointed Director of the Department of Police Accountability. Henderson is a contributing writer at Politico and also appears regularly on MSNBC, CNN, PBS and is the on-air legal analyst for the SF affiliate of CBS news.
Michael J. Klarman
Harvard Law SchoolProfessor Michael J. Klarman is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School. He received his J.D. from Stanford and his D. Phil. from Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. Professor Klarman clerked for the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009. He has published 5 books, including From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, which received the 2005 Bancroft Prize in History. In 2016, Professor Klarman published a comprehensive history of the making of the US Constitution, The Framers’ Coup, which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize.
Samuel Moyn
Yale Law SchoolSamuel Moyn is Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University. His areas of interest in legal scholarship include international law, human rights, the law of war, and legal thought, in both historical and current perspective. Over the years he has written in venues such as Boston Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dissent, The Nation, The New Republic, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Aziz Rana
Cornell Law SchoolAziz Rana is a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. Rana’s research and teaching center on American constitutional law and political development, with a particular focus on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since the founding. In addition to multiple books, he has written essays and op-eds for such venues as The New York Times, The Nation, Salon.com, CNN.com, Jacobin, and N+1.
Ann Ravel
Federal Election Commission (former Chair)Ann M. Ravel was nominated to the Federal Election Commission by President Obama on June 21, 2013. She joined the Commission on October 25, 2013 and served as Chair for 2015 and Vice Chair for 2014 before leaving in 2017. Previously, Ms. Ravel served as Chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission. She is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and a candidate for the California State Senate.
Radhika Shah
Radhika Shah is a tech angel/impact investor; Chair, Tech Advisory Group/Fellow at Stanford Human Rights Center, Sr. Advisor at Stanford Global Center for Gender Equality; Co-President Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs; advisor Sustainable Development Goals Philanthropy Platform; advisor Illumen Capital tackling investor bias; Cofounder earlier Ashoka SV Chapter. Influenced by Gandhian philosophy, she is passionate about socio-economic justice; tackling gender/racial bias & climate change - via bridge-building, technology & policy, conserving our democracy, inclusive economic growth and a women’s rights champion (including preventing violence against girls & women). She holds a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford and an MBA from Berkeley.
Stephany Rose Spaulding
University of Colorado, Colorado SpringsStephany Rose Spaulding is a candidate for U.S. Senate in Colorado as well as Director of Women's & Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Senior Pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church. She earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University and a Master of Divinity from the Iliff School of Theology. She has extensive experience in building bridges to people outside of her personal and professional circle, and building a dynamic sense of community for herself and others.
Laurence Tribe
Harvard Law SchoolLaurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard. The title “University Professor” is Harvard’s highest academic honor, awarded to just a handful of professors at any given time and to fewer than 75 professors in all of Harvard University’s history. Born in China to Russian Jewish refugees, Tribe entered Harvard at 16. He graduated summa cum laude in Mathematics (1962) and magna cum laude in Law (1966); clerked for the California and U.S. Supreme Courts (1966-68); received tenure at 30; was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2010; helped write the constitutions of South Africa, the Czech Republic, and the Marshall Islands; and has received eleven honorary degrees, most recently a degree honoris causa from the Government of Mexico in March 2011 that was never before awarded to an American, and an LL.D from Columbia University. Professor Tribe has prevailed in three-fifths of the many appellate cases he has argued (including 35 in the U.S. Supreme Court); was appointed in 2010 by Pres. Obama and Att. Gen. Holder to serve as the first Senior Counselor for Access to Justice. He has written 115 books and articles, most recently, “To End A Presidency: The Power of Impeachment” (co-authored with Joshua Matz). His treatise, “American Constitutional Law,” has been cited more than any other legal text since 1950.
Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldman is the author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life, the novels Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter's Keeper, as well as of the essay collection Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. She is the editor of Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases; Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation; and Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women's Prisons. She was a Federal public defender and an adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley law school where she developed and taught a course on the legal implications of the War on Drugs. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Michael Chabon, and their children.
Evan Wolfson
Freedom to Marry (Founder)Evan Wolfson was founder and president of Freedom to Marry, the campaign that won marriage in the United States, and is widely considered the architect of the movement that led to nationwide victory in 2015. Having achieved in 2015 the goal he had pursued for 32 years, Wolfson now devotes his time to advising and assisting diverse movements and causes in the US and around the world eager to adapt the model and apply the lessons that made the Freedom to Marry campaign so successful. Wolfson teaches law and social change at Georgetown Law Center, where he has been named a Distinguished Visitor from Practice.
Manny Yekutiel
Manny's, San Francisco, CAManny Yekutiel is the Founder of Manny's in San Francisco. He was previously the Finance Director of Senator Mark Leno's Mayoral campaign, Silicon Valley finance director for Secretary Clinton's 2016 Presidential campaign, Chief of Staff of FWD.us, a field organizer in President Obama's 2012 Presidential campaign and a White House Intern in the Summer of 2011.