Nina Varsava

Associate Professor of Law

Contact

nvarsava@wisc.edu
+16082659497
Room 8105, Law School

Curriculum Vitae

@NinaVarsava

Bluesky icon @ninavarsava.bsky.social

Education

J.D., Yale Law School
Ph.D., Stanford University
M.A., University of British Columbia
B.A., University of Alberta

Biography

Nina Varsava’s research focuses on adjudication, procedure, legal ethics, and jurisprudence. She is especially interested in issues of precedent, interpretation, and the relationship between law and morality. She teaches courses on civil procedure, professional responsibility, and philosophy of law.

Varsava’s recent scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals including Harvard Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Legal Theory, Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought, and the Journal of Moral Philosophy. Her scholarship has been covered by media outlets such as The New York Times and the American Bar Association Journal, and has been cited by both federal and state courts.

Following law school, Varsava served as a Judicial Law Clerk for the Supreme Court of Colorado.

For the 2025-26 academic year, Varsava is on sabbatical and is a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Law of the Universitat de Barcelona.

Scholarship & Publications

SSRN

Law Repository

Research Interests

Legal Theory
Procedural Justice
Law and Language
Judges and Courts
Legal Ethics
Bioethics and Health Law

Activities

Nina Varsava published "How is Law a Moral Practice?" in May 2025.
Nina Varsava, with coauthor Bill Watson of University of Illinois College of Law, published "Originalism's General-Law Turn" in December 2025.
Nina Varsava published "The Nature of Substance and Procedure" in May 2025.
Nina Varsava presented "Stare Decisis and Egregious Error" at the National Autonomous University of Mexico on Nov 12, 2024.
Nina Varsava presented "Stare Decisis and Egregious Error" at the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (Mexican Supreme Court) on Nov. 11, 2024.
Nina Varsava presented "Stare Decisis, Egregious Error and Imaginative Resistance" at the Texas A&M Law School Faculty Workshop on Nov. 6, 2024.
Nina Varsava published "Judicial Dark Matter" in the University of Chicago Law Review. Read the paper.
Nina Varsava presented "Stare Decisis, Egregious Error, and Imaginative Resistance" during The Collective: Women in Legal Philosophy seminar series Oct. 1, 2024.
Nina Varsava became an affiliate professor of the UW–Madison Philosophy Department in September 2024.
Nina Varsava presented "Stare Decisis, Egregious Error and Imaginative Resistance" during an online Legal Philosophy Discussion Group hosted by the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Brazil, Sept. 10, 2024.
Nina Varsava presented "Stare Decisis, Egregious Error and Imaginative Resistance" during an American Association of Legal and Social Philosophy Online Workshop Sept. 13, 2024.
Nina Varsava's paper, "Opinion Authorship and Precedential Status" was published in the Washington University Law Review in July 2024. Read the paper.
Nina Varsava presented "Reconstructing Precedent" during the Interpretivism and its Critics Conference at Oxford University on June 6, 2024.
Nina Varsava published "The Moral Practice Picture of Law" in JOTWELL on Jan. 29, 2024.
Nina Varsava presented "Precedent as a Moral Practice" during a book symposium on “Law is a Moral Practice” by Scott Hershovitz, hosted by the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México on Jan. 26, 2024.