| Kim Wehle | |
| Occupation: | Professor, lawyer, author, legal analyst and news commentator |
| Education: | University of Pennsylvania Cornell University (BA) University of Michigan (JD) |
| Employer: | University of Baltimore School of Law |
Kimberly Lynn Wehle is a tenured law professor, writer, and legal contributor for ABC News and a former legal analyst for CBS News. She is an expert in civil procedure, constitutional law, administrative law, and the separation of powers.
Wehle writes on democracy and the separation of powers, outsourcing government, and the federal administrative state. Before joining ABC News, Wehle was a contributor for the PBS-syndicated BBC World News and BBC World News America. She is also an op-ed contributor for Politico, The Atlantic, The Hill, The Guardian and The Bulwark, and a regular commentator on NPR's Morning Edition.[1] [2] [3] Wehle has authored three books, including How to Read the Constitution – and Why and What You Need to Know About Voting – and Why,[4] and How to Think Like a Lawyer—and Why: A Common-Sense Guide to Everyday Dilemmas. She is best known for her ability to demystify legal concepts. Her next book, How the Pardon Power Works and Why, is due for publication with Woodhall Press on September 3, 2024.
Wehle grew up in Buffalo, New York, the second of five children. During her childhood, she attended Catholic elementary schools and a non-sectarian all-girls school where she played lacrosse and explored her talent for the visual arts. Her mother, Betty Jane Wehle, was an amateur artist who started her own Montessori preschool in a Buffalo suburb in the early 1970s; she died in 2006. Her father, Richard E. Wehle, was a management consultant who died in 2015.
Wehle graduated high school from the Buffalo Seminary and went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania for one year before transferring to Cornell University, where she was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority as well as the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.[5] As an English major at Cornell, Wehle won a department award for the best honors thesis of her class. The paper was entitled The Vision of Flannery O'Connor. In the summer after her junior year, she attended the Leo Marchutz School of Art in Aix-en-Provence, France. Wehle was offered a full scholarship to remain at art school, but ultimately turned it down in order to complete her undergraduate degree at Cornell.
After graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell, Wehle went on to attend the University of Michigan Law School. There, Wehle was an editor of the Michigan Law Review. She graduated with a J.D. cum laude.[6]
Wehle began her career practicing law as a clerk to a federal judge, Hon. Charles R. Richey, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., then at the Federal Trade Commission; the Whitewater Investigation, where she worked with Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C.; and then worked in private practice. She has also argued several cases before the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and other appellate courts.
Wehle is a tenured Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She has previously taught at American University Washington College of Law, George Washington University Law School and the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Wehle specializes in the respective powers of the three branches of the federal government.[7] She teaches courses in Civil Procedure, Administrative Law, Federal Courts, Constitutional Law, American Democracy, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wehle has written four books, and is, as of June 2022, a legal contributor for ABC News.[8] She began her career in legal journalism unexpectedly. In 2017, she came across a news article that referred to the President's pardon power under the Constitution as "absolute." This statement prompted her to write her first op-ed, published in The Baltimore Sun, to underscore that most of the Constitution is not black and white, but grey, and that even the pardon power is subject to checks and balances.[9] From there, she began writing with greater frequency on issues of constitutional and legal significance for various journalistic outlets, including The Hill,[10] [11] The Bulwark,[12] and, later, The LA Times,[13] The Atlantic, Politico, Newsweek, and The Guardian. Based on Kim's written work, she is regularly invited to make media appearances on radio, podcasts, and TV. She has appeared regularly as a guest on BBC,[14] CNN, MSNBC, NPR,[7] [15] [16] Fox News, Al Jazeera, C-SPAN, PBS NewsHour, Peacock TV, NBC, Newsy, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, France 24, and on major networks in the Netherlands, Australia, and Ireland. Her current role for ABC News began with the hearings by the House Committee on January 6, 2021 and now spans other breaking legal news. During the Impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump, she provided in depth legal analysis for CBS, and appeared on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. She hosts a periodic show called #SimplePolitics on Instagram.