About the Provost

Jenny Martinez became Stanford University’s fourteenth provost in 2023.

A dedicated scholar, lawyer, and leader, Martinez previously served as Dean of Stanford Law School from April 2019 to September 2023. She is a leading expert on international law and constitutional law, including comparative constitutional law.

As chief academic and chief budgetary officer, Martinez is responsible for advancing Stanford’s teaching and research mission, stewarding university resources, and working closely with deans and administrators in support of strategic priorities. These include promoting constructive dialogue on campus, sustaining Stanford’s leadership on AI, and simplifying university processes.

Martinez joined the Stanford faculty in 2003. Her research spans a variety of issues in constitutional law and international law; her current research focus is on freedom of speech and academic freedom. She has also been a senior fellow (by courtesy) of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a faculty affiliate of Stanford’s Center on International Security and Cooperation and Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She previously served as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute.

Before joining the Stanford faculty, Martinez clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer (BA ’59) of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She was also an associate legal officer for Judge Patricia Wald of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. An experienced litigator, she has also argued in the U.S. Supreme Court.  

She received her B.A. in History from Yale University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.