Anne C. Dailey, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Intellectual Life and the Ellen Ash Peters Professor of Law at UConn School of Law, has been named as a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. This distinction is the highest honor the University confers on faculty and recognizes exceptional achievement in research, teaching, and service. It is awarded annually following a University-wide nomination process and a rigorous review by a committee of faculty and students and final approval from the Board of Trustees.

Dailey is a nationally recognized scholar whose work bridges constitutional law, family law, and psychoanalytic theory. A member of the UConn faculty since 1988, she has made transformative contributions to legal scholarship, education, and public service, with far-reaching influence across disciplines and institutions.

“I am honored to receive the award of Distinguished Professor from the University,” said Dailey. “My research and writing have focused on children’s legal rights as full persons and citizens under the United States Constitution. My work has been driven by a deep belief in the law’s potential to protect the most vulnerable among us and to promote the full flourishing of children and families. I’m grateful to my colleagues and students at the Law School for their support and inspiration over the years.”

Dailey earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Yale University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where she served as an articles editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, she completed a judicial clerkship with Judge José Cabranes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. She has become a pioneering figure in integrating psychoanalytic theory into legal analysis, most notably through her acclaimed book “Law and the Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Perspective,” published by Yale University Press. This work received three prestigious honors: the Book Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Book Prize from the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis, and the Faculty Book Award from the UConn Humanities Institute.

“I am thrilled that the University has bestowed its highest faculty honor on Dean Dailey, who is truly deserving of this recognition,” says School of Law Dean Eboni S. Nelson. “Through her impressive record of award-winning scholarship, innovative teaching, visionary leadership, and impactful mentoring of faculty and students, she has made many remarkable contributions to the Law School, University, and beyond. Throughout her extraordinary career, Dean Dailey has helped elevate the Law School’s national profile and has had an enormous influence on the advancement of justice in our country. She represents the best of what our University’s faculty have to offer in all dimensions”

Dailey’s scholarship is widely cited and influential. Her co-authored articles “The New Law of the Child” and “The New Parental Rights,” and her sole authored “In Loco Reipublicae,” all published in top-tier law journals, have shaped the national discourse on children’s constitutional rights, state responsibility for families, and evolving family structures.

She is a member of the American Law Institute and the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and Humanities. She has held visiting faculty appointments at Yale, Harvard, and Penn Law Schools and has been named an Erikson Scholar at the Austen Riggs Center and a Fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.