Brown was raised in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, and received her B.A. from
St. John's College (Annapolis, MD) in 1980. She earned her J.D. in 1984, graduating
magna cum laude from
Georgetown University Law Center, where she was the articles editor of the
Georgetown Law Journal. Following graduation, she served as a
clerk for Judge
Spottswood Robinson III of the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and during the 1985-1986 Term for
Thurgood Marshall of the
Supreme Court of the United States. After her clerkships, Brown worked in the
Office of Legal Counsel in the
U.S. Department of Justice. She then entered private practice with Onek, Klein & Farr in
Washington, D.C. From 1988 to 2008, she was a professor at
Vanderbilt University Law School, where in 2003 she was named to the Allen Chair in Law. In 2008, Brown joined the faculty of the USC Gould Law School as Newton Professor of Constitutional Law, and in 2014 was named The Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law. ==Personal life==