Jocelyn Benson earned a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College, a graduate degree from the University of Oxford, and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
In the midst of studying for her bachelor’s degree at Wellesley College, Benson founded the Women in American Political Activism conference and was the first student to be elected to serve in the governing body for the town of Wellesley, Massachusetts. She worked as a summer associate for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund as well as serving as a legal assistant to American legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg at National Public Radio (NPR). Prior to graduating from law school, Benson worked as general editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, a legal scholarship publication. Prior to entering law school, Benson lived in Montgomery, Alabama, and worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Benson served as a law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith, a justice for the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. She was hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2004 to develop its first nationwide Election Protection program, which gave the authority to select, recruit, and train its Voter Protection coordinators in twenty-one states, and to deploy over 17,000 trained election law attorneys in the midst of the 2004 presidential election. Benson developed similar efforts on behalf of the Michigan Democratic Party from 2006 to 2008. In her testimony before the United States House Judiciary Committee in after the 2008 presidential election, she advocated for a ban on the use of foreclosure lists as a means to challenge a voter’s eligibility on election days.
She served as an associate professor and associate director of Wayne Law’s Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights, and later as the dean of Wayne State University Law School. She is also the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.
