Sara C. Bronin

Sara C. Bronin, the Freda H. Alverson Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, is one of the country’s foremost experts in property, land use, zoning, and historic preservation law. Her interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places.

Professor Bronin has written Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World, three other books, two treatises (including the land use volume of the Restatement of Property (Fourth)), and dozens of law review articles. She founded and directs the National Zoning Atlas, which aims to digitize, demystify, and democratize information about zoning in the United States, and the National Preservation Atlas, which aims to illuminate the breadth of our tangible, shared history – and encourage its protection.

Professor Bronin has an extensive record of public service at the local, state, and federal levels. She chaired the planning and zoning commission of Connecticut’s capital city for seven years, leading its nationally recognized efforts to overhaul its zoning code, and she founded a pro-homes grassroots coalition that successfully advanced the first major statewide zoning reforms in several decades. Professor Bronin also served as the Senate-confirmed Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the independent federal agency charged with preserving the country’s historic places.

Professor Bronin has shared her expertise in hundreds of presentations and media appearances, including for CNN, Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and PBS NewsHour.

Professor Bronin has been an attorney, adviser, and expert witness for institutional clients, governments, and law firms dealing with complex matters. She is admitted to practice in Texas, Connecticut, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and she actively maintains her architecture license. Among other honors, she received the Heinz Award and an honorary degree from Trinity College.

Prior to joining GW, Professor Bronin was a tenured professor at Cornell University. She received the Rhodes Scholarship and the Harry S. Truman Scholarship to support her graduate study at the University of Oxford and Yale Law School. While in law school, she clerked for then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. A seventh-generation Texan, Professor Bronin is a native Houstonian. She grew up working in her grandparents’ Mexican restaurant. 

In the News