Spencer Overton is the Patricia Roberts Harris Research Professor at GW Law and writes and teaches extensively on democracy and race. He also directs GW’s Multiracial Democracy Project, which is currently researching: 1) racial harms to democracy posed by artificial intelligence; and 2) strategies to ensure effective representation of communities of color if the U.S. Supreme continues to scale back the protections of the Voting Rights Act.


Professor Overton is the author of the book “Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression,” the law review article “State Power to Regulate Social Media Companies to Prevent Voter Suppression,“ and several other academic and popular articles on race, democracy, and technology. He has testified before Congress numerous times, including on topics like voter suppression, online disinformation, content moderation, and deepfakes.


From 2014-2023, Professor Overton served as the President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies—America’s Black think tank—where he restored the organization’s fiscal health, established several program areas (including tech policy), and worked closely with civil rights groups, the Congressional Black Caucus, and various other policymakers to increase diversity among top political appointees and to devise and advance racially-equitable policies. Under his leadership the Joint Center became an early partner of the Partnership on AI, reframed national discussions on the future of work to include a racial analysis, proposed a civil rights carve out for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that was included in federal legislation introduced by Senator Mark Warner and Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, and proposed several solutions to expand access to broadband in the Black Rural South that were enacted into law in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021.

Professor Overton also held several senior leadership roles during the Obama campaign, transition, and Administration. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he led over 140 experts as chair of the campaign’s Government Reform Policy committee. On the transition, he chaired the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Agency Review Team and helped write the Administration’s ethics guidelines while serving in the office of the General Counsel. During the Administration, he was appointed as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, and partnered with other senior officials in leading the Administration’s democracy policy efforts related to the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Administration’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in federal elections.

Professor Overton’s work on the Jimmy Carter-James Baker Commission laid the groundwork for modern arguments against unnecessary voting restrictions. As a member of the DNC Presidential Nomination Scheduling Commission, he led an effort that resulted in Iowa restoring voting rights to over 80,000 returning citizens. He was also part of a group of commissioners that worked to successfully move more diverse states like South Carolina and Nevada to the beginning of the modern Democratic presidential primary process, which would later have significant implications in selecting the Democratic nominee in 2008 (Barack Obama) and 2020 (Joseph Biden).

Professor Overton currently serves on the board of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Education Fund, and has also served on the national boards of the American Constitution Society, the Center for Responsive Politics (Open Secrets), Common Cause, and Demos.

Prior to joining the academy in 2000, Overton practiced law at the firm Debevoise & Plimpton, clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Damon J. Keith, and graduated with honors from both Hampton University and Harvard Law School.