Jenny Diamond Cheng

Lecturer in Law

Jenny Diamond Cheng studies the political and legal treatment of families and children. Her research examines the boundaries between legal childhood and adulthood, and she has written extensively about the minimum voting age. She holds a B.A. in philosophy from Swarthmore College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was Book Reviews Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Professor Cheng also holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. Before coming to Vanderbilt, she was a visiting assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and a Miller Center Fellow in Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Professor Cheng teaches courses on Education Law and Family Law. In 2019 she received a Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award for excellence in teaching.

Representative Publications

• "The Law of Unintended Consequences: Eighteen-Year-Old Voting and Child Support Doctrine," 2 Modern American History 397 (2019)
  Full Text | WWW
• “Accessing Equality: High School Students, the First Amendment, and the Equal Access Act of 1984,” in Growing Up America: Youth and Politics Since 1945 (Susan Eckelmann Berghel, Sara Fieldston & Paul M. Renfro eds, University of Georgia Press, 2019)
  Full Text | WWW
• "Voting Rights for Millennials: Breathing New Life into the Twenty-Sixth Amendment," 67 Syracuse Law Review 653 (2017)
  Full Text | SSRN | WWW
• "Easy Voucher Money Has its Dangers," Moment Magazine (May/June 2017)
  Full Text | WWW