A law Professor at Yale University, she is also known for her memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011). Her first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003), was a New York Times bestseller.
She attended Harvard University, where she was the editor of the Harvard Law Review. She taught at Duke University for nearly a decade before joining the faculty at Yale Law School in 2001.
In 2007, she published a book entitled Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance – and Why They Fall.
She was born in Illinois to Chinese-Filipino immigrant parents. She married fellow Yale Law School professor, Jed Rubenfeld; the couple became parents to daughters named Sophia and Louisa.
She once expressed her admiration for Andy Rooney's work.