Ayesha Bell Hardaway’s work examines the intersection of race, criminal law, and policing. Her research explores how federal intervention and community oversight have been used to address police misconduct, and she investigates the structural factors (including police associations and collective bargaining rights) that obstruct efforts to reform law enforcement practices. She is currently leading a research project that offers a comprehensive analysis of the political and socio-economic factors that support police abuses through institutional mechanisms like lobbying and union protections.

Her legal scholarship is deeply informed by her long-standing commitment to community service and client-centered advocacy. As a clinician at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, she has represented clients unable to secure private counsel through the school’s Health Clinic, Civil Litigation Clinic, and Criminal Clinic. Now serving as Director of the Criminal Law Clinic, she trains and supervises third-year law students in handling misdemeanor cases from arraignment through trial, using a pedagogical framework grounded in client advocacy and justice.

In addition to her teaching and legal practice, Professor Hardaway is also Director of the Social Justice Law Center and Director of the University’s Social Justice Institute. In these roles, she facilitates dialogue, research, and learning around urgent social justice concerns—bringing students, scholars, and communities together through lectures, public events, and curricular innovation.

Her voice and expertise have reached national audiences. She has provided legal analysis on CNN, including The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and her commentary has appeared in USA Today, Associated Press, Rolling Stone Magazine, New York Times, ESPN, and US News and World Report, among others.

Before joining the Case Western Reserve University School of Law faculty, Hardaway practiced at Tucker Ellis LLP and began her legal career as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.

She is a graduate of the College of Wooster and earned her J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.