Professor Krishnakumar's scholarship focuses on the legislative
process and on statutory interpretation. Several of her early
articles, appearing in the Harvard Journal on
Legislation, examined key components of the congressional
budget process. More recent articles have
evaluated and advocated for legislative process reforms regarding
lobbying rules and representation reinforcement for
politically disadvantaged groups. Professor Krishnakumar's
latest article, on the Hidden Legacy of Holy Trinity
Church, argues that there is an overlooked but important canon
of statutory construction at work in Holy Trinity and
several other prominent twentieth-century Supreme Court statutory
interpretation cases. The article will appear in the
upcoming volume of the William & Mary Law
Review. Professor
Krishnakumar also has a work in progress examining
empirical and doctrinal trends in the Roberts' Court's statutory
interpretation cases.
Professor Krishnakumar holds an A.B. (with
distinction in Political Science) from Stanford University and
a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a Coker Teaching Fellow
and served as the Chair of the Notes Committee for the Yale Law
Journal and was a Senior Editor on the Yale Law and
Policy Review. Before teaching, Professor
Krishnakumar clerked for the Hon. José A. Cabranes on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
and practiced law at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw and
Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. From 2004 to 2006,
she was a visiting professor at Touro Law School, where she won the
Visiting Professor of the Year Award in 2005.
Professor Krishnakumar joined the St. John's faculty as an
Assistant Professor of Law in 2006 and was promoted to
Associate Professor of Law in 2008. She received a Dean's
Teaching Award in 2009. She currently
teaches Legislation, Introduction to Law, and Administrative
Law.