Center Staff

• Ross Sandler, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation (1986-1990) and Special Advisor to the Mayor of the City of New York (1981-82), is the founding director of the Center. He graduated from Dartmouth College and New York University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review, a member of the Order of the Coif, and a Root-Tilden Scholar. Professor Sandler was appointed professor of law at New York Law School in 1993, and teaches courses in state and local government, torts, and New York City law. He has written widely on New York City government, infrastructure, environment, and transportation. He was an adjunct professor of law at NYU from 1976 to 1993, and a visiting lecturer at Yale University School of Law in 1977.
• Frank Berlen '07, is the Associate Director and Managing Editor. A life-long New Yorker, Frank is excited to be a part of an organization that aids the public in understanding the City’s complex system of law and government. Before joining the Center, Frank spent time litigating land use, environmental, and real estate development issues.
• Peter Schikler '08, CityLand editor
• Jesse Denno, Publication Production Assistant
• Sarah L. Knowles, Events, Marketing, Website & Subscription Coordinator
  
• Luna Droubi '11, Fellow, CityLaw
• Frank St. Jacques '11, Fellow, CityLand
• Jeff Hopkins, Illustrator
• The Center also employs New York Law School students each semester. This semester's student is:
  Kristoff Grospe Student Intern
  
  
  

Center Scholars

• Andrew Berman, Associate Professor of Law
  
  
  Professor Andrew Berman has been largely responsible for a surge of interest in real estate law among New York Law School students. He is working with the Law School’s Center for New York City Law on land use and real estate development issues to create opportunities for students to gain practical experience in the real estate community and make contacts for future employment.
   
  Formerly a partner at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood’s New York Real Estate Group, Professor Berman spent fourteen years in private practice prior to joining the faculty at New York Law School in 2002. While at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, he represented clients in all aspects of commercial real estate finance, including complex financing transactions such as mezzanine loans, preferred equity, and financings intended for securitization markets. Professor Berman also has extensive experience in real estate development projects, the sale and acquisition of real property and mortgage loan portfolios, and complex commercial leasing, including Times Square signage and telecommunication transactions.
  A native of New York City, Professor Berman is a 1984 graduate of Princeton University and holds a J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law. He joined the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell as a Corporate/Real Estate Associate directly from law school. He then moved to Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz for four years as a Real Estate Associate before joining the Real Estate Group at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood in 1995, becoming Partner in 1998.
  Professor Berman's previous academic experience includes teaching Real Estate Transactions at City University of New York School of Law and Lawyering at New York University School of Law. He has been Editor of Metes & Bounds, a newsletter published by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and is currently working on an article called "Capital Markets and Real Estate Finance Strategies for Developing Co-Housing Communities."
  Professor Berman is actively involved with the Real Property Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the Urban Land Institute.
• Kathleen Grimm '80, Deputy Chancellor, Finance and Administration for the New York City Department of Education.
• Eric Lane, professor of law at Hofstra University and former Counsel and Executive Director to the 1988 and 1989 Charter Revision Commissions, teaches New York Law School's New York City Charter course. Professor Lane is co-author of two books with former U.S. appeals court judge and White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva. The first, titled The Legislative Process, is a casebook that has been widely adopted in law schools throughout the country. The second, An Introduction to Statutory Interpretation and the Legislative Process, is a text for law students and lawyers. He is also the author of a number of articles on governmental decision-making.
  
  Professor Lane also spent six years (1981-1986) as chief counsel to the New York State Senate Minority. He serves on the boards of the Vera Institute of Justice, The Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, and the American Museum of Natural History (as an appointee of the Comptroller of the City of New York). He also serves as a consultant for the Justice Project of the Center for Court Innovation

• David Schoenbrod, professor of law at New York Law School and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, is a nationally-recognized expert on Congress' delegation of its law-making powers to regulatory agencies, as well as legal remedies and environmental law. He is a frequent contributor to the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal.
  
  Professor Schoenbrod has worked with government agencies, non-profit groups, and private firms. He is a consulting attorney on a variety of constitutional and environmental issues for the American Petroleum Institute. He has worked for the Project on Urban Transportation with the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Association of the Bar of the City of New York Committee on Electric Power and the Environment; the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration development program; and clerked for Judge Spottswood Robinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals. He is also a member of American Tree Farmers' Association, reflecting his ardent interest in the environment.
  
  A 1963 magna cum laude graduate of Yale College, he attended Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar gaining a graduate degree in economics and then completed Yale Law School (LL.B., 1968), where he was an editor of the law journal. Professor Schoenbrod is the author of Power without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation (Yale University Press, 1993), an examination of how Congress circumvents responsibility by delegating power to make laws to administrative agencies. He also has published articles on environmental law, remedies, and the law and politics of regulation in scholarly journals.

Affiliated Faculty

• Anthony Crowell, Counselor to the Mayor, City of New York.