She earned her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) and her M.A. and M.Phil. degrees in political science from Yale University. She was a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court and for Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; she also was an appellate litigator in the Washington D.C. offices of WilmerHale, where her practice involved cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous other state and federal appeals courts. Professor Elliott's scholarship focuses on the role of courts and agencies in a democratic society and has been published in the Stanford Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, the Boston University Law Review, and the Alabama Law Review, among others.