Professor Theodore Ruger

Theodore W. Ruger is the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law. He is a scholar of constitutional law, specializing in the study of judicial authority, and an expert on health law and pharmaceutical regulation.

Ruger holds an A.B. from Williams College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and he was a law clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Prior to joining the Law School, Ruger practiced law at Ropes & Gray in Boston and Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., and began his academic career at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.

Ruger joined Penn Law in 2004 and previously served as Deputy Dean of the Law School. He has taught a wide range of classes in constitutional law, health law and regulation, legislation, and food and drug law and policy. He has also served in a variety of critical roles in the school, including three terms as a member of the faculty appointments committee, one as chair and another as co-chair. He also served as an advisor to the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

His scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Northwestern Law Review, and as the centerpiece of a symposium in Perspectives on Politics, a leading peer-reviewed political science journal.

His current research draws on his broader work on judicial power and constitutionalism, and addresses the manner in which American legal institutions — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have shaped the field of health law over the past two centuries.