J.D., Yale University, 2002
Ph.D., King’s College, Cambridge, 2002
B.A., Yale University, 1994
Disability Law
Employment Discrimination Law
Legal Theory
Contract Law
Law and Sexuality
Elizabeth Emens writes and teaches on disability law, family law, anti-discrimination law, contracts law, and law and sexuality.
A Columbia Law faculty member since 2005, Emens’s scholarly work has appeared in publications including Hastings Center Report, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Nomos, Narrative, The Disability Studies Reader, and Keywords for Disability Studies. Emens is the author of The Art of Life Admin: How to Do Less, Do It Better, and Live More (2019), which explores how unseen and unpaid work is a universal problem but a particular burden for disadvantaged and disabled people. She is also co-editor, with Professor Michael Ashley Stein, of Disability and Equality Law (2013). In 2019, Emens delivered the Clifford Chance Thought Leadership Lecture on Diversity.
In addition to her scholarly work, Emens teaches a practicum on lawyer leadership as part of the Law School’s Davis Polk Leadership Initiative. She also directs the Columbia Law School Mindfulness Program, which offers weekly secular meditation sessions for the Law School community.
Emens was the Bigelow Fellow and lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2003 to 2005. She clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, from 2002 to 2003.
Drawing on her experience as a working mother, Elizabeth Emens offers guidance on how to manage the “invisible labor” of administrative tasks that "fill our minds and steal our time," such as scheduling doctor appointments, paying bills, and planning for weddings, births, deaths, and other major life events. Life Admin tackles the problem of admin in all its forms, from everyday tasks like scheduling doctors appointments and paying bills, to life-cycle events like planning a wedding, a birth, a funeral. Emens explores how this labor is created, how it affects our lives, and how we might avoid, reduce, and redistribute admin whenever possible—as individuals and as a society.
In her book “Life Admin,” Professor Emens explores how unseen and unpaid work is a universal problem but a particular burden for disadvantaged and disabled people.