New York Law School Welcomes New Faculty Members, Announces Promotions of Five Current Faculty

Contact: Nancy Guida, 212.431.2325, nguida@nyls.edu

New York Law School Welcomes New Faculty Members,

Announces Promotions of Five Current Faculty

NEW YORK, October 3, 2006 --- New York Law School’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Stephen J. Ellmann, has announced promotions and appointments of new and existing faculty.  

Promotions and Votes of Tenure

During the 2005–2006 academic year, the Law School Faculty and Board of Trustees voted tenure for Professor of Law Elizabeth Chambliss. Pamela Champine, Seth Harris, and Sadiq Reza were also voted tenure and each promoted to full Professor of Law. Kris Franklin was also voted a full Professor of Law and received a long-term contract.

·         Elizabeth Chambliss, Codirector, Center for Professional Values and Practice

Professor Chambliss specializes in the empirical study of the U.S. legal profession, focusing on the regulation of lawyers and the dynamics of lawyers’ careers. Her research examines the role of ethics advisors, general counsel, and other compliance specialists in large law firms, and the implications of this emerging role for the regulation of lawyers more generally. She also serves as the reporter for the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, which issues periodic reports about the status of minorities in the legal profession. Her recent publications include: The Professionalization of Law Firm In-House Counsel, 84 North Carolina Law Review 1515 (2006); The Scope of In-Firm Privilege, 80 Notre Dame Law Review 1721 (2005); and Miles to Go: Progress of Minorities in the Legal Profession (American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, 2005). She joined the Law School in 2004 following a four-year stint as research director of the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School.

Education: College of Charleston, B.S. 1983 magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa; University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.S. 1984, J.D. 1988 cum laude, Order of the Coif, Ph.D. 1992.

Pamela Champine, Director of Core Curriculum, Graduate Tax Program
Professor Champine is an expert in the law of estates and trusts and related aspects of taxation. An active tax scholar, she has written and practiced extensively in these areas. Her years of experience, first in private practice and later as law secretary to Manhattan Surrogate Eve Preminger, lend a practical perspective to her teaching and scholarship. Her scholarship addresses different dimensions of the fundamental dilemma in the law of wills: how to differentiate valid wills that reflect idiosyncratic or unpopular dispositions from invalid wills that embody choices the individual testator did not understand or did not approve. Her present work focuses on the legal standards that define the level of mental competency required to execute a will and the methods of proving this competence in probate proceedings that occur after the death of the testator. She teaches Property; Wills, Trusts & Future Interests; Competency & the Civil Law; Income Taxation of Trusts and Estates; and Problems of Timing.

Education: University of Illinois, B.S. 1985; Northwestern, J.D. 1988; New York University, LL.M. (Taxation) 1990.
Law Secretary to Surrogate Eve Preminger and Principal Court Attorney, Surrogate’s Court.

·        Seth Harris, Professor and Director, Labor and Employment Law Program
Professor Seth Harris left his post as counselor to Alexis Herman, U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, to join New York Law School’s faculty as an associate professor in 2000. Professor Harris had spent nearly seven years at the United States Department of Labor as a senior advisor to two secretaries of labor. While leaving government service, he did not abandon his involvement in legal policy issues affecting the workplace and American workers. Professor Harris teaches Employment Discrimination Law, Labor Relations Law, and Torts; and has published widely on law and economics, labor law, disabilities law and discrimination law. He enriches his teaching and legal scholarship with a real-world understanding of politics and public policy. He also produces policy-related programs for students, alumni, and the public, including the Tony Coelho Lecture in Disability Employment Law & Policy.

Education: Cornell University, School of Industrial & Labor Relations, B.S. 1983; New York University, J.D. 1990 cum laude (Review of Law and Social Change, Editor in Chief).

Law Clerk, the Honorable William Canby, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit; Law Clerk; the Honorable Gene Carter, Chief Judge U.S. District Court, District of Maine.

·         Sadiq Reza
Professor of Law Sadiq Reza, an authority in criminal law and procedure, is a former public defender in Washington, D.C., and also an award-winning teaching fellow at Harvard who taught undergraduate courses in Islam and the modern Middle East. He is the author of insightful articles on the right to privacy as it applies to criminal suspects and arrestees, and to the government’s widespread use of detention of immigrants after 9/11. He has been a wise and measured voice for justice in our nation’s response to terrorism. Professor Reza’s current research and writing is in criminal law and procedure in Islamic law (sharia) and in countries of the contemporary Muslim world. In 2004–2005, he was a visiting researcher at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. He is now at work on a study of search and seizure in Islamic law and a separate inquiry into torture and confessions in Islamic law, and is coauthoring a pathbreaking textbook for this field of legal study.

Education: Princeton, A.B. 1986 cum laude; Harvard, J.D. 1991 cum laude (Harvard International Law Journal, Articles Editor).

Law Clerk, the Honorable Stanley A. Weigel, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.

·         Kris Franklin, Director, Academic Skills Program

Professor of Law Kris Franklin brings a talent for creative and unconventional thinking both to her teaching of legal analysis and to her leadership of the Law School’s Academic Skills Program. She teaches Principles of Legal Analysis and Applied Analysis to the first-year class and continues to experiment with pioneering methods of teaching lawyering skills. She came to New York Law School from New York University School of Law, where she helped develop and shape the current curriculum in critical legal thinking in its Lawyering Program. An expert in the fields of legal pedagogy and academic support, she is the founder of the New York Area Academic Support Colloquium. She is also a very active scholar, whose articles combine insights into the nature of legal precedent and legal reasoning with close attention to the evolving understanding of lesbian and gay rights.

Education: Yale, B.A. 1989 cum laude; New York University, J.D. 1992 (Review of Law & Social Change, Editor in Chief) Public Interest Law Foundation Fellowship, 1990.

New Full-Time Faculty Appointments

New York Law School has added two new full-time faculty members in the areas of international law and taxation.

·        Tai-Heng Cheng, Associate Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Center for International Law

Tai-Heng Cheng was appointed Associate Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Center for International Law on June 1. He is concurrently a guest professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Additionally, he is and has been a member of various committees of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, including the United Nations Committee, the Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee and the International Law Committee; and is Special Counsel to the Special Committee on the Bar Examination and Other Measures of Legal Competency of the New York State Bar Association. Professor Cheng previously practiced law with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, representing and advising clients on complex litigations and arbitrations concerning private and public international law, conflicts of law, and intellectual property law. Before joining the firm, he was a senior officer with the Singapore Police Force and provided advice on counter-terrorism and international security arrangements. During that time, he also advised the Prosecutor-General of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor. His most recent work is State Succession And Commercial Obligations (Transnational Publishers, 2006).

Education: Oxford University, B.A. (Law) First Class Hons. 1999, Oxford University Scholar, M.A. 2004; National University of Si ngapore, Graduate Diploma in Singapore Law, 2001;
Yale Law School, LL.M. 2000, J.S.D. 2004, Howard M. Holtzman Fellow for International Law.

·         Diane L. Fahey, Associate Professor of Law

Diane L. Fahey joined the full-time faculty on July 1 as Associate Professor of Law. A noted tax specialist, Professor Fahey, first came to New York Law School as a visiting professor for the spring 2006 semester, teaching Federal Income Tax: Corporate and Federal Income Tax: Individual. In the fall 2006 semester, she will teach Civil Procedure, while continuing to teach tax. Previously, she was a Visiting Professor of Law at Vermont Law School. Recent published scholarly work includes “Taxing Nonprofits out of Business,” 62 Washington & Lee Law Review (Spring, 2005) and “The Tax Court’s Jurisdiction Over Due Process Collection Appeals: Is it Constitutional?” 55 Baylor University Baylor Law Review (2003), reprinted in The Monthly Digest of Tax Articles (April 2004). She also contributed several chapters to reference works on corporate and business law. At the School’s 2006 Faculty Presentation Day, she delivered “Tax Treaties: A Potential Weapon to Fight Human Trafficking?” to the panel “Evolving Families and the Law II.”

Education: Cleveland State University, B.A. 1979; Cleveland-Marshall College of Law,
J.D. 1983 cum laude; Georgetown University Law Center, LL.M. (Taxation) 2000. 
Law Clerk, the Honorable James Halpern, United States Tax Court, 2000–2002.

Visiting Faculty, 2006–2007

Visiting New York Law School faculty members for the 2006–2007 academic year are an eminent group of scholars who represent a broad range of legal disciplines. Their individual and combined scholarship places them among the leaders in thought and research in legal academia.

·         Anne Bloom, Visiting Professor of Law

Professor Anne Bloom joins New York Law School for the fall 2006 semester, teaching Torts and Civil Procedure. An expert in public law, American politics, and political theory, she is visiting from the Pacific McGeorge School of Law where she is an Assistant Professor of Law. Professor Bloom also has significant experience as a public interest lawyer in Washington, D.C., primarily with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, where she worked for nearly ten years litigating precedent-setting cases in civil rights and civil liberties, mass torts, court secrecy and federal preemption. She has spoken before Congressional hearings on proposed changes to the Federal Rules, meetings of the American Trial Lawyers Association and the American Bar Association. Her current research interests include the role of tort litigation in shaping public policy; the motivations and practice styles of public interest lawyers; and the emerging field of transnational workers rights litigation.

Education: Mount St. Mary’s College, B.A. 1983; University of Maryland, J.D. 1988; University of Washington M.A. 1998, Ph.D. 2003 (Political Science).

·         Lloyd Bonfield, Visiting Professor of Law (Spring 2007)

Lloyd Bonfield is a legal historian and internationally minded law professor, visiting from Tulane University, where he serves as Thomas Andre Jr. Professor of Law and Associate Dean for International Graduate Studies and International External Relations. His teaching is in the areas of trusts and estates, property, and European Union Law, as well as legal history. While a visiting professor at Cornell Law School in the early 1980s, he was a founding editor of Law and History Review (the journal of the American Society for Legal History), and then a founding editor of Continuity and Change, (published by Cambridge University Press), a journal on law and social structure in past societies. He has also written extensively on the historical aspects of marriage settlements and inheritance. He has edited a volume on English manorial courts for the Selden Society. Currently, Professor Bonfield is collaborating on a volume (1688–1760) for the Oxford History of English Law. In spring 2007, he will teach Property.

Education: University of Massachusetts, B.A. 1971; University of Iowa, J.D. 1975 with high distinction; University of Iowa, M.A 1974 (History); University of Cambridge,  Ph.D. 1978 (History) Fulbright Scholar 1975–1977.

·         Hon. Douglas H. Ginsburg, Distinguished Visiting Scholar

Ginsburg is Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to which he was appointed by President Reagan in 1986. He is also Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, and in alternate years, Visiting Lecturer and Charles J. Merriam Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School.

Judge Ginsburg previously served as a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School; as Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget; and as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the American Law and Economics Association, and the Mont Pelerin Society. His extensive thought leadership and scholarship includes “On Constitutionalism,” the first annual B. Kenneth Simon Lecture in Constitutional Thought (Cato Institute, September 17, 2002), reprinted in Cato Supreme Court Review, 2002–2003.

Education: Cornell, B.S. 1970; University of Chicago Law School, J.D. 1973. (Law Review, Articles Editor).

Clerk, Hon. Carl McGowan, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, 1973–1974.

Clerk, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court of the United States, 1974–1975.

·         Brandt Goldstein, Visiting Associate Professor of Law (Fall 2006)

Brandt Goldstein is an attorney and writer whose articles have been published in The New York Times Magazine, SLATE, MSNBC.com, and elsewhere. A 1992 graduate of Yale Law School, he clerked for Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He then practiced law as an associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Washington for several years before beginning to write full time. The cofounder of the online legal commentary journal WRIT (for FindLaw.com), Goldstein was a research assistant at Yale Law School from 1999 to 2001. There he began work on Storming the Court (Scribner, 2005), which recounts the story of the suit filed by Yale law students and human rights lawyers to free innocent refugees held on Guantanamo by the American military in the early 1990s. Professor Goldstein will teach Civil Procedure at New York Law School.

Education: Brown University, A.B. 1987; Yale Law School, J.D. 1992. Yale Law JOURNAL (Senior Editor), Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities (Editor).

·         Dan Hunter, Visiting Professor of Law (Fall 2006)

An expert in cyberspace and internet law, artificial intelligence and cognitive science models of law, and electronic commerce regulation, Professor Dan Hunter visits New York Law School from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he is an associate professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics. Since October 2000, he has been a Member, Panel of Neutrals, Domain Name Disputes, for the World Intellectual Property Organization (Switzerland), and is the leader of the Open Access Law Project at Science Commons. His research has appeared in the California Law Review (three times) the Texas Law Review and the William & Mary Law Review. While at NYLS he will be working on book projects, including an introduction to intellectual property law for Oxford University Press, and a book on the social significance of virtual worlds.

Education: Monash University, B.S. 1987, LL.B., 1989; University of Melbourne, LL.M. 1996; University of Cambridge, Ph.D. 1999; Fulbright Postgraduate Fellowship, 1995; Herchel Smith Research Fellowship in Intellectual Property Law, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1995; Research Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2005; Fellow, Science Commons, 2006.

·         Elliott Milstein, Visiting Professor of Law (Spring 2007)

A specialist in asylum law, clinical legal education, international human rights, and negotiation, Elliott Milstein was president of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in 2000, the first clinical teacher elected to that position. He continues to serve as a parliamentarian for AALS, and was the chair for its Mini Workshop on Evaluation in 2005. He was also dean of American University’s Washington College of Law from 1988 to 1995 and served one year as interim president of American University starting in 1993. One of the most senior and respected clinical legal educators in the nation, Milstein founded the clinical program at Washington College of Law, served as its Director from 1972 to 1988, and has taught extensively in its clinics. He has been a leader in the development of the concepts and methods that are the basis for in-house clinical education and has trained or mentored many clinical teachers. His outstanding contributions to legal education have been recognized with honorary doctorates from the University of Hartford and Nova Southeastern University. At New York Law School, he will teach the Lawyering course and be part of the School’s strong clinical faculty.

Education: University of Hartford, B.A. 1966; University of Connecticut School of Law, J.D. 1969; Yale University Law School, LL.M. 1971.

ABOUT NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL

Founded in 1891,

New York Law School

is an independent law school located in lower

Manhattan

near the city’s centers of law, government, and finance.

New York Law School

’s renowned faculty of prolific scholars has built the school’s strength in such areas as constitutional law, civil and human rights, labor and employment law, media and information law, urban legal studies, international and comparative law, and a number of interdisciplinary fields. The school is noted for its six academic centers: International Law; New York City Law; Professional Values and Practice; Business Law & Policy; Information Law and Policy; and Justice Action.

New York Law School

has more than 13,000 graduates and enrolls some 1500 students in its full- and part-time J.D. programs and its Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Taxation program. 

New York Law School

has also created the Online Mental Disability Law Program for those professionals who work with, or on the behalf of, persons with mental disabilities.