Aya Gruber

Aya Gruber is Harold Medill Heimbaugh Professor of Law at USC Gould School of Law. Before joining the USC Gould School of Law faculty, Gruber taught at the University of Colorado Law School, where she was the Ira C. Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law and Criminal Justice.

Gruber teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law and procedure, critical theory, feminism and comparative/international law. Much of her scholarship focuses on feminist efforts to strengthen carceral responses to crimes against women. Her widely taught and cited articles combine insights from practicing as a public defender with extensive research to articulate a feminist critique of authoritarian laws on violence against women. They appear in leading journals including Stanford Law Review, California Law Review and Northwestern Law Review.

In 2020 Gruber released her debut monograph The Feminist War On Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration. She is writing a new book tentatively titled The Crime of Sex (Basic Books, forthcoming) that explores the American fascination with criminalizing sexual behavior. In addition to her writing on gender and crime, Gruber has written a book on comparative criminal procedure, articles on treaty law and human rights, and articles on criminal procedure and privacy. Her scholarship has been covered in diverse publications, including the New York Times, Slate, The Guardian, Reason Magazine, the Harvard Law Review and the Michigan Law Review.

Gruber was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 2016 and has been an adviser to the ALI Model Penal Code sexual assault project since 2012. A frequent public speaker on criminal justice, Gruber has appeared on PBS, Fox News, ABC, CBS’ 48 hours, and is quoted in various news outlets, including the New Yorker, Slate and the New York Times. In 2023, she was featured in the MSNBC film The Recall: Reframed, which critically examines the recall of Judge Aaron Persky who presided over the infamous Brock Turner case.