Anya Bernstein

Professor of Law

Anya Bernstein teaches and writes about administrative law, civil procedure, legal interpretation, and the cultures of bureaucracy. With a JD from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, Bernstein brings the ethnographic and semiotic insights of anthropology to the study of judicial opinions and administrative practices. She has done ethnography and interviews with agency officials to help illuminate the everyday life of the administrative state — the part of government tasked with bringing democratic decisions to life. Interested in how participants in  democratic governments legitimize themselves and understand their governments, Bernstein has done extensive research in both the United States and Taiwan. 

Before coming to UConn Law in 2023, Bernstein was a professor at SUNY Buffalo School of Law, a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, and a law clerk for Judge Guido Calabresi on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Her work has appeared in (or will soon be published in) The Yale Law Journal, The University of Chicago Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, and PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, among others. In 2022, Bernstein was elected a trustee of the Law and Society Association, and in 2023, to the executive committee of the American Association of Law Schools Section for Administrative Law.