Amy Gajda is recognized internationally for her expertise in media law, torts, information privacy and higher education law. Gajda brings her background as an award-winning television news anchor and reporter, whose work was published in newspapers including The New York Times, to her insight into the tensions between social regulation and protected expression. Her scholarly articles have appeared in the California Law Review and other legal journals.

Her book The First Amendment Bubble: How Privacy and Paparazzi Threaten a Free Press, published in January 2015 by Harvard University Press, explores judicial oversight of journalistic news judgment. Her first book, The Trials of Academe (Harvard University Press 2009), focused on academic freedom.

Gajda practiced law in Washington, D.C., before starting her teaching career at the University of Illinois. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, Virginia and her home state of Michigan. She has chaired the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Defamation and Privacy and its Section on Mass Communication, and she led the Law and Policy Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

The Class of 2013 chose her as winner of the Felix Frankfurter Award For Distinguished Teaching, the law school’s highest teaching honor.