Deborah L. Brake

Professor Brake’s scholarship explores the theoretical underpinnings of various dimensions of equality law.  She has written articles on retaliation and other negative reactions to equality claims, examining how constitutional and statutory law responds to persons who challenge inequality.  Much of her work explores how legal doctrine fits the realities of lived experience, drawing on social science literature to inform that relationship.  She is a nationally recognized expert and author on Title IX and gender equality in sports, and on gender discrimination more broadly.  Her articles have appeared in journals such as the Minnesota Law Review, William and Mary Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, and the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender.  Her article, Leveling Down: When Equality Makes Everyone Worse Off, was selected for the prestigious Yale/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum in 2004.

Professor Brake strives to connect her scholarship to practical legal problems.  She recently coauthored a Supreme Court amicus curiae brief in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., in which the Supreme Court rejected a continuing violation rule for challenging ongoing pay discrimination, and testified before Congress in support of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to reverse that decision.

Before joining the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh, Professor Brake was senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C.  She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, and Stanford University.

Selected Publications

Scholarly Articles:

• Deborah Brake, Title IX as Pragmatic Feminism, 55 Cleveland State L. Rev. 513 (2008).
• Deborah Brake and Joanna Grossman, The Failure of Title VII as a Rights-Claiming System, 86 North Carolina L. Rev. (2008).
• Deborah Brake, Perceiving Subtle Sexism: Mapping the Social-Psychological Forces and Legal Narratives that Obscure Gender Bias, 16 Columbia J. of Gender & Law (2007).
• Deborah Brake, Retaliation, 90 Minnesota Law Review. 18 (2005).
• Deborah Brake, When Equality Leaves Everyone Worse Off: The Problem of Leveling Down in Equality Law, 46 William & Mary Law Review. 513 (2004).
• Deborah Brake, Revisiting Title IX's Feminist Legacy: Moving Beyond the Three-Part Test, 12 American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & Law (2004).
• Deborah Brake, The Struggle for Sex Equality in Sport and the Theory Behind Title IX, 34 U. Mich. J. L. Ref. 13 (2001)
• Deborah Brake, The Cruelest of the Gender Police: Student-to-Student Sexual Harassment and Anti-Gay Peer Harassment under Title IX, 1 Geo. J. Gender & L. 37 (1999).