New faculty and scholars are joining or visiting the University of Virginia School of Law this school year, strengthening the depth and breadth of the school’s curricular offerings and scholarly knowledge.
Resident Faculty
Professor Karen Moran has returned to UVA Law to direct the Graduate Writing Program. In 2005, Moran joined the faculty as co-director of the Legal Research and Writing Program. After an absence from the Law School from 2016-18, Moran came back to teach Graduate Legal Research and Writing as a lecturer. She is teaching Graduate Legal Research and Writing both semesters.
Gerard Robinson is a Professor of Practice in Public Policy and Law at UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and has a joint appointment at UVA Law. His areas of expertise are K-12 and higher education, criminal justice reform, race in American institutions and the role of nonprofit organizations in civil society. He is teaching a Seminar in Ethical Values this semester and will teach Education Inside U.S. Prisons in the spring.
Visiting Faculty
Margit Cohn is the Henry J. and Fannie Harkavy Chair in Comparative Law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Cohn’s main research interests in public law span the study of the nature and theory of the executive branch, the nature and politics of judicial review, comparative public law and constitutionalism. She is teaching The Executive Branch: Comparative and Political Aspects this semester.
Franciska Coleman, a scholar in residence at the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, is an assistant professor of constitutional law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She is an interdisciplinary scholar, whose work draws upon political theory, critical discourse analysis and constitutional law. She writes at the intersection of the First and 15th Amendments and is currently focused on how groups marginalized along lines of race and class are impacted by cancel culture and voting rights jurisprudence. She is teaching Race, Class and Democratic Legitimacy in the spring semester.
Federico Fabbrini a professor of European law at the School of Law and Government of Dublin City University in Ireland, where he also directs the European Law Research Centre and is the founding director of the Brexit Institute. He previously held academic positions at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Fabbrini’s work has been cited by the European Court of Justice, and he has written high-level reports at the request of the European Parliament and Eurogroup Presidency. He is teaching European Union Law in October.
Idris Fassassi is a professor of public law at University Paris Panthéon-Assas, where he co-heads the comparative public law master’s degree. He teaches courses and has published in the fields of constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, international human rights law and international criminal law. He will teach The Right To Protest during the spring semester.
Lecturer Eugene R. Fidell is of counsel at the Washington, D.C., firm Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell and has taught Military Justice at Yale, Harvard, New York and American universities. Fidell is president emeritus of the National Institute of Military Justice and former chair of the Committee on Military Justice of the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War. He is teaching the seminar Contemporary Challenges in Military Justice this semester as a Karsh Center for Law and Democracy Distinguished Fellow.
Linda Greenhouse is a senior research scholar in law at Yale Law School and a distinguished fellow at the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy. She covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times between 1978 and 2008 and she contributes frequently to the newspaper’s opinion pages. Greenhouse received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 and the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University’s Kennedy School in 2004. She is teaching The Institutional Supreme Court this semester.
Sarah Haan is the Class of 1958 Uncas and Anne McThenia Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Haan writes on the intersection of corporate law and democracy, on subjects such as corporate governance, corporate political speech and disclosure. She will teach two courses in the spring, Corporate Law as Innovation and the Law & Business section of Corporations.
Aneil Kovvali is an associate professor of law at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law. His research focuses on corporate law and governance. Prior to joining the Maurer School of Law faculty, Kovvali was a Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is teaching the course Stakeholderism and Business Law this semester.
Zhuang (John) Liu is an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong who will co-teach Chinese Law in the spring semester. Liu is one of the leading scholars in applying quantitative methods to study Chinese law. His research projects include work that takes advantage of a large dataset of judicial opinions in China to analyze and predict judges’ decisions, uses statistical methods to estimate judicial transparency in China, studies law and development with a combination of court data and economic data in China, and involves experimental studies to reveal the hidden behavioral patterns of judges.
New Scholars
Sarah Beach is an inaugural Education Rights Institute Fellow and a research assistant professor of law. Beach’s perspective is informed by her experience as an elementary, secondary, and university public educator and her research as a critical scholar.
John J. Martin is a Karsh Center for Law and Democracy Fellow and research assistant professor of law. His research focuses on election law, primarily campaign finance law and election administration law.
Helen Min is an inaugural Education Rights Institute Fellow and research assistant professor of law. As an education researcher, she has broad expertise in mixed-methods research, education psychology, curriculum and instruction.
Christopher Williams, who holds a J.D. and a master’s degree in sociology, is a research assistant professor of law and a Race, Place and Equity Fellow. He will teach Critical Race Theory in the spring.
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Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.
