Resident Faculty Quick Guide

Gerard Robinson

Education, criminal justice reform, race in American institutions, the role of nonprofit organizations

Former secretary of education for the commonwealth of Virginia under Gov. Bob McDonnell; provided guidance to 16 public universities, the community college system, five higher education and research centers, the Department of Education and state-supported museums.
Co-editor of the books Education for Liberation: The Politics of Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America’s Prisons (2019) and Education Savings Accounts: The New Frontier in School Choice (2017).
Former executive director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, a Washington, D.C.-based research and education initiative created by a partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the Charles Koch Foundation and Koch Industries.
Former program director and later president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that supported federal and state parental choice policies empowering low-income and working-class Black families.

Bertrall Ross

Constitutional law, election law, constitutional theory, legislation and statutory interpretation

M.Sc., London School of Economics (Marshall Scholar), and M.P.A., Princeton
Received the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction at UC Berkeley School of Law (2021)
Serves on Administrative Conference of the United States, and President Biden’s Commission on Supreme Court Reform
Clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Myron Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama

Elizabeth A. Rowe

Trade secret law, intellectual property, trademark law, patent law

Co-author of the first and leading U.S. casebook on trade secrets, in addition to a “Nutshell” treatise on trade secrets
Four of her articles have been named by Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property Review as among the best intellectual property articles of the year
Member of the American Law Institute and a member of the Leadership Council for The Sedona Conference Rowe, which conducts in-depth study in the areas of antitrust, complex litigation and intellectual property rights to provide nonpartisan consensus-based guidance to courts and attorneys
Former partner at the law firm of Hale and Dorr in Boston (now WilmerHale), where she practiced complex commercial litigation, including intellectual property and employment litigation

George Rutherglen

Employment discrimination, civil rights and admiralty, civil procedure and international civil litigation

Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas and John Paul Stevens, and forJudge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Chaired the advisory committee on Fourth Circuit Rules
Rutherglen's book, "Civil Rights in the Shadow of Slavery," discusses the dynamics of legislative and judicial enforcement over the entire history of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. (Story)

James E. Ryan

Education law, constitutional law, local government law

President of the University of Virginia since Aug. 1, 2018
Former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2013-18
Also served on the UVA Law faculty from 1998-2013, including as academic associate dean (vice dean)
Author of “Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America” and the New York Times best-selling “Wait, What? And Life’s Other Essential Questions”

Karoline Homer Ryan

Children and the law, state and local policy, special education, juvenile justice

Has served as staff attorney for the Education Law Clinic at Harvard Law School and as a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in its Child Advocacy Program
From 2008-13, Ryan was the director of the Child Advocacy Pro Bono Project at the Law School
Early in her career, she received an Echoing Green fellowship to develop a child advocacy project in San Diego, worked on education reform issues at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York and served as deputy counsel for a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.

A. Sprightley Ryan

Externships, directed study and field experience in the law

Served as inspector general of the Smithsonian Institution
Practiced with the law firm Beveridge & Diamond in Washington, D.C.
In 1995 Ryan joined the Environmental Crimes Section of the U.S. Department of Justice as a trial attorney, and during that time served as a special assistant U.S. attorney with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.

Nelson Camilo Sánchez León

International human rights law, Inter-American human rights system, business and human rights, transitional justice

Director of the International Human Rights Clinic, co-director of the Human Rights Program and director of the Human Rights Study Project
Worked as research director of the Center for the Study of Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia)
Former associate professor of law at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Served with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Colombian Commission of Jurists

Frederick Schauer

Constitutional law, evidence and legal reasoning, philosophy of law

Frank Stanton Professor the First Amendment, Emeritus, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (also taught courses on evidence and freedom of speech at Harvard Law School)
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
Author of numerous books and articles, including "Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning" and "The Force of Law" (forthcoming in 2015) (Faculty Q&A)
Was founding co-editor of the journal Legal Theory

Richard C. Schragger

Separation of church and state, property, local government and land use

M.A. in legal theory, University College London
Clerked for then-Chief Judge Dolores Sloviter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Authored articles on the establishment clause and local regulation of religion, the role of cities in a federal system, local recognition of same-sex marriage, takings law and economic development, and the history of the anti-chain store movement. (Faculty Q&A)

Micah J. Schwartzman

Law and religion, jurisprudence and political philosophy

Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he received his doctorate in politics
Clerked for Judge Paul V. Niemeyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Received the Law School’s Carl McFarland Prize for outstanding research (Story)
Schwartzman's scholarship has explored the First Amendment's religion clauses, the free exercise clause and the establishment clause. He is the co-editor of "The Rise of Corporate Religious Liberty." (More)

John K. Setear

International law, including international environmental law and counterfactual diplomatic history

Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Judge Carl McGowan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Was a policy analyst in the behavioral sciences department of the RAND Corp.
Setear’s academic interests include a short course on the law of baseball, and research into contractual “deals with the devil” in popular culture. (Story)

Molly Bishop Shadel

Advocacy and verbal persuasion, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

Author of two books on public speaking: "Tongue-Tied America: Reviving the Art of Verbal Persuasion" and "Finding Your Voice in Law School: Mastering Classroom Cold-Calls, Job Interviews, and Other Verbal Challenges"
Senior Fellow, National Law Security Center; formerly an attorney with U.S. Department of Justice, where she represented the U.S. on terrorism-related matters before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
Practiced law at Covington & Burling, both in Washington, D.C. and New York
Has directed theater professionally

Sarah Shalf

Civil litigation, appellate advocacy, clinical education and community engagement

Clerked for Frank M. Hull of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Worked nine years at a litigation boutique in Atlanta on both commercial and public interest cases, including cases involving employment discrimination and consumer class actions, protests, election law, disability rights, prisoner civil rights and tort reform
Served for eight years as counsel of record for the student-run Emory Law School Supreme Court Advocacy Program, and director of Emory’s externship program

Crystal Shin

Special education, child advocacy and juvenile justice

Directs the Holistic Youth Defense Clinic
Formerly worked as a legal aid attorney representing indigent children and families on special education, juvenile justice and immigration matters
Is the 2017 co-recipient of the Virginia State Bar's Young Lawyer of the Year Award

Lawrence B. Solum

Legal theory, constitutional theory, procedure, philosophy of law

His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the debate between originalism and constitutional theory
Editor of Legal Theory Blog, an influential weblog that focuses on developments in contemporary normative and positive legal theory
Also works on problems of law and technology, including Internet governance, copyright policy and patent law

Barbara A. Spellman

Evidence, psychology and the law

Ph.D. in psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
Previously the editor-in-chief of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, Spellman is the co-author of "The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law."
Teaches evidence and courses on the intersection of psychology and law
Studied cognitive psychology at UCLA; her research focused mostly on memory, analogical reasoning and causal reasoning

Paul B. Stephan

International law, business and economics

Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and for Judge Levin Campbell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Has taught extensively abroad (Story)
Worked on a variety of projects involving law reform in former socialist states after the collapse of the Soviet Union, including Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Albania and Slovakia on behalf of the U.S. Treasury, and in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan on behalf of the International Monetary Fund
Helped win case against Russian government's seizure of oil company (Story)
Is the coordinating reporter on the Fourth Restatement, providing guidance on foreign relations law (Story)

Megan T. Stevenson

Criminal law and criminal procedure

Economist and criminal justice scholar focused on criminal justice reform, including bail, algorithmic risk assessment, misdemeanors and juvenile justice
Research on bail cited extensively in a landmark federal civil rights decision, O’Donnell v. Harris, and in the media
Holds a Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Berkeley

Gregg Strauss

Domestic relations and family law

Ph.D. in philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Recent scholarship has revolved around defining a theory behind marriage, including why the state is involved in licensing marriages at all
Teaches Family Law and Torts

Pierre-Hugues Verdier

International law and business, financial regulation

Practiced corporate and financial law with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York City
Is one of five Canadians to be awarded the Diploma of the Hague Academy of International Law since 1950
Writes on the international regulation of banking and securities markets, the law of foreign state immunity, and the application of international law in domestic courts around the world

J. H. Verkerke

Employment law and discrimination, contracts, contract theory, law and economics

M.Phil. in economics, Yale University
A pioneer in the use of technology in the classroom, won a $10,000 Hybrid Challenge Grant for Technology-Enhanced Teaching to convert his first-semester Contracts course into flipped classroom model of instruction (Story)
Author of an open-source Contracts casebook published by the CALI eLangdell Press. (Link)
Recent scholarship focuses on information-forcing rules in contracts and on vicarious liability for employee torts
In 2013, began an empirical study of law school teaching practices and how they affect student experiences and outcomes

Mila Versteeg

Comparative law and human rights

D.Phil. in socio-legal studies, Oxford University
Has written on the constitutions of nations, including the declining influence of the U.S. Constitution (Story)
Named a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, which provided her with a $200,000 award to expand her research into the world's constitutions to better understand how constitutional rights are enforced in different countries. (More)
Gained human rights experience working at the U.N. Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute in Turin and at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre in Johannesburg

Steven D. Walt

Contracts, sales/commercial paper, legal philosophy, bankruptcy and secured transactions

Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy, University of Chicago
Has received several academic awards, including a Whiting National Fellowship in the Humanities
Co-author of two popular casebooks, "Secured Transactions in Personal Property" and "Payments and Credits"

Xiao Wang

Appellate litigation, federal courts

Director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic
Founder and organizer of National Appellate Clinic Network and En Banc Institute
Clerked for Judge Karen N. Moore of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Lucy H. Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
Research centers on interplay between U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts, with particular focus on judicial organization and First Amendment issues