Elaine M. Chiu

Professor of Law, St. John’s University School of Law

Professor Elaine Chiu is the inaugural Chairperson of the Anti-Asian Violence Task Force of the Asian American Bar Association of New York and led the data research in the task force’s recent Endless Tide report. She is also a Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law, a school that has provided access to the legal profession for marginalized communities throughout its almost 100-year history. From 2014 through 2022, she led the school’s Ron Brown Center for Civil Rights and its premier diversity law school pipeline program, the Ron Brown Prep Program.

Professor Chiu is a respected scholar who has written about difficult topics in contemporary criminal justice such as intimate partner violence and drug addiction. Each year, she teaches Criminal Law, Family Law, a civil rights scholarship course called Perspectives on Justice, and Lawyering.

Prior to coming to St. John’s, Professor Chiu was a Research Fellow at Columbia Law School, a Climenko-Thayer Fellow at Harvard Law School and an adjunct professor at Cardozo Law School. She also served for five years as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan under Robert Morgenthau. Professor Chiu is a first-generation college student and cum laude graduate of Cornell University. She earned her JD at Columbia University School of Law where she was a Senior Editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.