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 recently published Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World (W.W. Norton). She is the author of three other books, two treatises (including the land use volume of the Restatement of Property (Fourth)), and dozens of law review articles, and she founded and directs the National Zoning Atlas, which aims to digitize, demystify, and democratize information about zoning in the United States.

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. In 2020, she founded DesegregateCT, a pro-homes grassroots coalition that successfully advanced the first major statewide zoning reforms in several decades.

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. The first person of color to serve as Chair, she prioritized the improvement of regulatory and policy approaches to housing, climate change, and the concerns of Indigenous Peoples during her tenure. Previously, Bronin served as a board member for Latinos in Heritage Conservation, an advisor for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the chair of Preservation Connecticut, and the vice chair of Hartford historic preservation commission.

Professor Bronin has shared her expertise in hundreds of presentations, including at Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, UVA, and Michigan, and at national conferences of lawyers, architects, historic preservationists, and builders. She has been cited and interviewed more than four hundred times by a variety of media, including CNN, the Associated Press, the NY 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 an honorary degree from Trinity College.

Prior to joining GW, 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, Sara is a native Houstonian. She grew up working in her grandparents’ Mexican restaurant.