Professor Franklin’s primary research interests are in the fields of constitutional law, antidiscrimination law, and legal history. She is particularly interested in the history of antidiscrimination law in the areas of sex and sexual orientation, and the ways in which this history influences legal conceptions of equality today. Her most recent article, Inventing the “Traditional Concept” of Sex Discrimination, was published in the Harvard Law Review. Her article The Anti-Stereotyping Principle in Constitutional Sex Discrimination Law, NYU Law Review (2010) was awarded the Kathryn T. Preyer Prize by the American Society for Legal History. She is currently working on an article about same-sex marriage litigation.

Professor Franklin received a B.A. in English and History from Yale University and a D.Phil. in English from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. After completing her doctorate, she received a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as an Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal. She clerked for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who at the time sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before joining the UT Faculty, Professor Franklin was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Ribicoff Fellow at Yale Law School.