Jennifer Mascott

Biographical Sketch

Jennifer Mascott is Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director of The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Antonin Scalia Law School. Professor Mascott writes in the areas of administrative and constitutional law and the separation of powers, and she serves as a Supreme Court contributor for NBC News. Her scholarship has been cited extensively by the Supreme Court and federal circuit and district courts and has been published or is forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, the Supreme Court Review by the University of Chicago Press, the George Washington Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the George Mason Law Review, among other journals.   

In 2022, Professor Mascott joined as coauthor for the upcoming 9th edition of Beermann/Cass/Diver’s Administrative Law: Cases and Materials. The well-known Legal Theory Blog has reviewed Professor Mascott’s work as “path breaking,” and she is a permanent commentator at the Yale Journal of Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog. In 2023, Professor Mascott received the Justice Joseph Story Award given annually to a young academic for excellence in scholarship, concern for students, and commitment to teaching in a manner that advances the rule of law.  

Professor Mascott has been elected to a three-year term as Council Member of the ABA’s Administrative Law Section.  And she serves as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. She frequently testifies in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House on topics ranging from executive privilege to regulatory reform to Supreme Court jurisdiction and has testified during the confirmation hearings for two U.S. Supreme Court justices.  Professor Mascott has also testified on sentencing guidelines reform before the U.S. Sentencing Commission.  In 2021, Professor Mascott created a seminar on the “Separation of Powers in the Political Branches” and founded the student Separation of Powers Clinic at the Scalia Law School. Previously, Professor Mascott served as Faculty Director of the law school’s Supreme Court and Administrative Law clinics. 

Professor Mascott routinely presents at academic conferences and symposia, including at past events affiliated with Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Texas, UVA, Duke, and Georgetown law school organizations, the American Bar Association, the American Constitution Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the Federalist Society. She regularly provides commentary related to her academic expertise in the national media and trade press including past appearances on Meet the Press, NBC News Special Report, the Today Show, ABC’s This Week, PBS NewsHour, CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, and Fox News. Professor Mascott has published in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post and has been quoted or cited by the New York Times, the WSJ, AP, Bloomberg, Reuters, USA Today, and the National Law Journal, among other publications.   

In 2019, Professor Mascott took a leave of absence from the law school to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel within the U.S. Department of Justice. In May 2020, she was appointed Associate Deputy Attorney General and starting in November 2020, served in a double appointment as both ADAG and a deputy in OLC through January 2021. Separate from her formal responsibilities in those two roles, Professor Mascott assisted with aspects of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation process and argued cases in federal appellate and trial courts during her government service.    

From 2015 through 2017, Professor Mascott served as an Olin/Searle Fellow in Law affiliated with the Georgetown University Law Center. She also previously taught at the George Washington University Law School as a Professorial Lecturer in Law. Professor Mascott is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, formerly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Professor Mascott graduated summa cum laude from the George Washington University Law School, where she earned the highest cumulative graduating GPA on record at the law school. She received the John Bell Larner Award for the highest cumulative GPA in the graduating class, the Jennie Hassler Walburn Award for excellence in the area of civil procedure, and the Imogen Williford Constitutional Law Award.