Mila Sohoni
Born
Sharmila Sohoni

1978 or 1979 (age 45–46)[1]
Spouse
Christopher Egleson
(m. 2006)
Academic background
EducationHarvard University (A.B., J.D.)
Univ. of Cambridge (M. Phil.)
Academic work
DisciplineAdministrative law
Institutions

Sharmila Sohoni is an American lawyer and legal scholar who specializes in administrative law. Sohoni is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and was previously the Herzog research professor of law and associate dean of faculty at the University of San Diego School of Law.[2] In 2022, she was appointed a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.[2]

Early life and career

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Mila Sohoni was born to Neera Kuckreja Sohoni, a writer and scholar of women's issues in Mumbai, and Venkat Sohoni, a manufacturing executive.[1]

She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and earned a master's degree in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. She then worked as a science and technology correspondent for The Economist from 2000 to 2002.[3] She then received a law degree from Harvard Law School[1] cum laude.[4] After law school, she was a law clerk to Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.[1] From 2006 to 2011, she was an associate at the law firm Jenner & Block LLP.[5] From 2011 to 2013, she taught at the New York University School of Law.[6] She then moved to the University of San Diego School of Law, where she became a full professor of law in 2017.[7] She was a visiting professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and Harvard Law School in 2018.[8] In 2024, she moved to Stanford Law School as a professor of law.[2]

She has written extensively about the major questions doctrine,[9] which she has said "looms over any big agency action that the administration wants to do" and "allows courts a great deal of leeway to pick and choose which agency actions to strike down and which to sustain".[10]

Her scholarship has also been important to the legal debate over universal injunctions[11] and over whether the Administrative Procedure Act allows courts to vacate a regulation universally or only as to its application to parties challenging it.[12] In The Lost History of the "Universal" Injunction, Sohoni identified Lewis Publishing Co. v. Morgan (1913) as a universal injunction issued by the Supreme Court much earlier than the first examples critics had identified from the 1960s.[13] According to Professor Doug Rendelman, she "applied scrupulous research to refute the national government injunction's critics' arguments that the 'traditional' view was that an injunction 'benefitted' only the party plaintiff and that the national government injunction is a recent innovation".[14] As to universal vacatur, Justice Brett Kavanaugh has agreed with Sohoni's view, citing her article The Power To Vacate a Rule.[15]

Personal life

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Sohoni is married to Christopher Egleson, a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin.[16]

Published full-length articles

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Sharmila Sohoni, Christopher Egleson". The New York Times. August 20, 2006.
  2. ^ a b c Schreiber, Monica (April 2, 2024). "Civil Procedure and Administrative Law Scholar Joins Stanford Law School". Stanford Law School.
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  10. ^ Kruzel, John (February 23, 2023). "U.S. Supreme Court's 'major questions' test may doom Biden student debt plan". Reuters.
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  12. ^ Frost, Amanda (Nov 23, 2022). "In major immigration case, both sides look to academia to untangle three knotty questions". SCOTUSblog.
  13. ^ [1] at n. 110
  14. ^ Rendelman at 953 [2]
  15. ^ Blackman, Josh (November 20, 2023). "Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett's Shadow Docket Concurrence in the Hamburger Mary's Case".
  16. ^ Coyle, Marcia (April 22, 2020). "In Virus Era, Law Prof Teams With Husband as 'In-House' Counsel on SCOTUS Brief". Law360.