Deborah N. Archer is an American civil rights lawyer and law professor. She is the Margaret B. Hoppin Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. She also directs and founded the Community Equity Initiative at NYU Law and directs the Law School's Civil Rights Clinic. In 2021, Archer was elected president of the American Civil Liberties Union, becoming the first person of color to hold the position in the organization’s history.

Early life and education Archer was born to Delroy and Paula Archer, both Jamaican migrants, in Windsor, Connecticut. Her father worked as a machinist at Colt Manufacturing, and her mother was a processing clerk at Fleet Bank. Archer is a first-generation American citizen and college graduate.

Archer graduated Smith College in 1993 with a degree in government, and earned her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1996. At Yale, she won the Charles G. Albom Prize.

Career After graduating from Yale, Archer clerked for Judge Alvin W. Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. She then became the Marvin H. Karpatkin Legal Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union in 1997. From 1998 to 2000, she was the assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She then worked as an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett from 2000 to 2003.

Archer joined New York Law School (NYLS) as a member of the faculty in 2003 and was appointed professor of law in 2007. She directed the Racial Justice Project, co-directed the Impact Center for Public Interest Law Center, and was the inaugural dean of diversity and inclusion.

Since 2009, she has been on the ACLU’s board, and since 2017 has been general counsel and a member of the board’s executive committee. She is also a member of the boards of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society, and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. In 2016 and again in 2017, Archer served as acting chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, the body that investigates allegations of police misconduct.

After 15 years at NYLS, Archer moved to New York University in July 2018. Archer previously served as Jacob K. Javits Professor at New York University and as Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law. She currently directs the Civil Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law.

ACLU president On January 30, 2021, a remote meeting of the ACLU board elected Archer president of the organization, making her the first person of color to hold the position in the organization’s 101-year history. As its eighth president, she chairs the board of directors, setting the direction the organization takes in civil litigation policies. Archer succeeded Susan N. Herman, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and ACLU president since 2008, who oversaw a period of growth with increased donations following the election of President Donald Trump and extensive litigation during his administration. In a statement on Archer’s election, Romero said that civil rights and racial justice were top priorities for the organization moving forward and noted Archer’s expertise in these fields.

Honors

In 2025, Archer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://www.law.nyu.edu/node/44180 In 2023, she received the Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers Award from the Clinical Legal Education Association https://www.ali.org/news/articles/deborah-archer-recipient-cleas-outstanding-advocate-clinical-teachers-awardI and the Arabella Babb Mansfield Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers. https://www.nawl.org/arabella-babb-mansfield-award And in 2022, she was awarded the Smith Medal, the highest alumnae award given by Smith College. https://www.smith.edu/news-events/news/meet-2022-smith-college-medalists In 2016, Archer was honored by the New York Law Journal which cited her as one of its Top Women in Law. She holds an honorary degree from Seattle University.

Hee 2025 book, Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequity, was a national USA Today best seller. In 2021, the Law and Society Association awarded Archer the John Hope Franklin Prize, Honorable Mention for her article "'White Men's Roads Through Black Men's Homes': Advancing Racial Equity Through Highway Reconstruction", which appeared in the Vanderbilt Law Review. She also received the 2021 Stephen Ellmann Memorial Clinical Scholarship Award from the American Association of Law Schools, and the Haywood Burns/Shanara Guilbert Award from the Northeast People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference.

Personal life Archer is married to Richard R. Buery, Jr., CEO of the nonprofit organization Robin Hood and a former deputy mayor of New York City. They live in Brooklyn with their two sons.

Selected works

Archer, Deborah N. Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality. W.W. Norton & Company (2025). Archer, Deborah N.; Schottenfeld, Joseph (2024). "Defending Home: Toward a Theory of Community Equity". University of Chicago Law Review, forthcoming. Archer, Deborah N. (2021). "Transportation Policy and the Underdevelopment of Black Communities". Iowa Law Review 106: 2125.

Archer, Deborah N. (2020). “‘White Men’s Roads Through Black Men’s Homes’: Advancing Racial Equity Through Highway Reconstruction”. Vanderbilt Law Review. 73: 1259. Archer, Deborah N. (2019–20). “Exile From Main Street”. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. 55: 788. Archer, Deborah N. (2019). The New Housing Segregation: The Jim Crow Effects of Crime-Free Housing Ordinances. Michigan Law Review. 118: 173.

References

External links “Where Do We Go From Here?: A Conversation About the Future of Race and Inequality in America” – discussion with Anthony Thompson at NYU Law’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, September 25, 2020