Senator Sujata Gadkur-Wilcox

Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox is Senator-Elect for Senate District 22 in the Connecticut General Assembly, representing Bridgeport, Trumbull, and Monroe. She will serve as the chair of the new Government Oversight Committee, the Regulations Review Committee, and a Select Committee on Special Education. She will also serve as Vice Chair of the Judiciary Committee and the Higher Education and Employment Committee. Sujata is also Professor of Legal Studies at Quinnipiac University, where she teaches classes in constitutional law, comparative law, and human rights law, among other subjects. She is the Executive Director of the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights and a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar.

Sujata was earlier appointed by Governor Ned Lamont to serve as a Commissioner on the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities in Connecticut (CHRO). Her appointment was unanimously confirmed by the Connecticut General Assembly in both the House and the Senate. Sujata has worked with students to implement principles of community action planning in the local community and has organized human rights workshops at the United Nations and Oxford University. Sujata received her BA in Government from Cornell University, her MPhil in Politics from the New School, and her JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Prior to coming to Quinnipiac, she served as the program director of Juvenile Law, a non-profit legal education program helping students understand their rights and responsibilities under the law, and before that worked as a litigation associate.

Sujata has presented papers, given podcasts, and published articles on domestic violence law in India, First Amendment jurisprudence in the United States, and legal pluralism in constitutional discourse. And her work in political engagement is discussed in her Tedx Talk on a politics of the public good. Sujata is interested in understanding how different voices and perspectives came to shape constitutional principles and conceptions of justice in both the United States and Indian Constitutions, and is currently writing a book on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and the drafting of the Indian Constitution.