Kimberly Wehle

Kimberly Lynn Wehle is a tenured law professor, writer, and legal contributor for ABC News and a former legal analyst for CBS News. She is an expert in civil procedure, administrative law, and the separation of powers. Wehle writes on democracy and the separation of powers, outsourcing government, and the federal administrative state. Before joining ABC News, Wehle was a contributor for the PBS-syndicated BBC World News and BBC World News America. She is also an op-Ed contributor for Politico, The Atlantic, The Hill, The Guardian and The Bulwark, and a regular commentator on NPR's Morning Edition. Wehle has authored three books, including How to Read the Constitution – and Why and What You Need to Know About Voting – and Why. Her latest book is How to Think Like a Lawyer—and Why: A Common-Sense Guide to Everyday Dilemmas. She is best known for her ability to demystify legal concepts. Her next book, [[How the Pardon Power Works and Why]], is due for publication with Woodhall Press on September 3, 2024. Early life and education Wehle grew up in Buffalo, New York, the second of five children. During her childhood, she attended Catholic elementary schools and a non-sectarian all-girls school where she played lacrosse and explored her talent for the visual arts. Her mother, Betty Jane Wehle, was an amateur artist who started her own Montessori preschool in a Buffalo suburb in the early 1970s; she died in 2006. Her father, Richard E. Wehle, was a management consultant who died in 2015. Wehle graduated high school from the Buffalo Seminary and went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania for one year before transferring to Cornell University, where she was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority as well as the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. As an English major at Cornell, Wehle won a department award for the best honors thesis of her class. The paper was entitled The Vision of Flannery O'Connor. In the summer after her junior year, she attended the Leo Marchutz School of Art in Aix-en-Provence, France. Wehle was offered a full scholarship to remain at art school, but ultimately turned it down in order to complete her undergraduate degree at Cornell.