Wendy Weiser is Vice President for Democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, a non-partisan think tank and public interest law center that works to revitalize, reform and defend our systems of democracy and justice. She oversees the Center’s work on voting rights and elections, redistricting and representation, federal reform, abuse of power, and the courts. A strategic nonprofit leader, Weiser directs research and policy development, litigation and legal strategy, legislative advocacy and public education strategies to strengthen democracy so that it works for all Americans. She has launched multiple successful programs, including a voting rights and elections program that has helped increase voter access and participation across the country and was the first to combine a focus on voting rights with a deep engagement with election administration; a judiciary program that works to reform the Supreme Court and to strengthen state constitutionalism as a source of protecting rights and freedoms; and an initiative to strengthen the guardrails against the abuse of executive power that included a bipartisan National Task Force on Rule of Law and Democracy, among others. Her work and the work she oversees is grounded in thorough research.

A constitutional lawyer and an expert on a range of democracy issues, Weiser has authored multiple publications and articles on democracy issues, litigated ground-breaking lawsuits, authored dozens of U.S. Supreme Court briefs, testified on multiple occasions before both houses of Congress and in state legislatures, and provided legislative drafting assistance to legislators and administrators nationwide. She has crafted and advanced a number of successful policy initiatives, including automatic voter registration, which is now used in roughly half the states, and she helped lead the national push for the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, among others. She is a frequent public speaker and media contributor on democracy issues, appearing regularly on major television and radio networks. Her commentary has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, USA Today, Slate, and elsewhere.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Weiser was a senior attorney at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund; a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; and a law clerk to Judge Eugene H. Nickerson in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She received her BA from Yale College and her JD from Yale Law School.