April Xiaoyi Xu

Forrester Fellow

Office Address
351B
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Education & Affiliations

B.A., Pomona College
J.D., Harvard Law School

Biography

April Xiaoyi Xu is a Forrester Fellow at Tulane Law School. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A., summa cum laude, in Politics and Spanish (minor) from Pomona College. Her research interests concentrate on the intersections between criminal law and health law. Xu's prior publications have focused on the insanity defense, digital privacy law and medical isolation law surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, among other topics.

Xu worked as a Teaching Fellow for Judge Joseph A. Greenaway and a Research Assistant for Professors Jeannie Suk Gersen, Urs Gasser, Amy Finkelstein, and Noah Feldman. She interned for Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Xu started her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Michael H. Simon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. She then practiced law at Allen & Overy and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe as a litigation associate.

Articles

April Xiaoyi Xu, Applying the Model Penal Code (MPC)’s Insanity Defense to Sleepwalking Killers and Psychopaths: Interfacing Neuroscience and Criminal Law, 23 New Crim. L. Rev., 471-515 (2020).

April Xiaoyi Xu, When Judges Compete on a Lawless Terrain: Possible Futures for Clerkship Hiring, Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. (2020).

April Xiaoyi Xu, But What If Big Brother’s Surveillance Saves Lives?–Comparative Digital Privacy in the Time of Coronavirus, 54 Creighton L. Rev. 147-172 (2020). 

April Xiaoyi Xu, They Belong with Taylor Swift: Applying Trademark Law and Textual Analysis to the Branding of Love Song Lyrics, 2020 U. Ill. L. Rev. Online 139-151 (2020). 

April Xiaoyi Xu, Note, Smartphones Out, Bye COVID-19!—Assessing the Possibility of Exporting China’s Global Pandemic-Era QR Codes as Health Certificates, Harv. J.L. & Tech. Dig. (2021).

April Xiaoyi Xu, Catch and Contain Novel Pathogens Early!–Assessing U.S. Medical Isolation Laws as Applied to a Future Pandemic Detection and Prevention Model, 55 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 23-41 (2021).

Richard Liu, Thaddeus Mason Pope, and April Xiaoyi Xu, Deep and Continuous Palliative Sedation Without Artificial Nutrition and Hydration: An International Review, 35 Ind. Int’l Comp. L. Rev. 67-151 (2025).