Ganesh Sitaraman

Chancellor Faculty Fellow
Professor of Law
Director, Program in Law and Government
Vanderbilt University School of Law

Monday, Aug. 27, 2018

Ganesh Sitaraman’s current research addresses issues in constitutional, administrative and foreign relations law. Professor Sitaraman is the author, most recently, of The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution (Knopf, 2017), which was named one of The New York Times' 100 notable books of 2017. His previous book, The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars (Oxford University Press, 2012), was awarded the 2013 Palmer Prize for Civil Liberties. Professor Sitaraman was on leave from Vanderbilt’s faculty from 2011 to 2013, serving as Elizabeth Warren’s policy director during her campaign for the Senate, and then as her senior counsel in the Senate. Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2011, Professor Sitaraman was a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and the Public Law Fellow and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. He has also been a research fellow at the Counterinsurgency Training Center-Afghanistan in Kabul. An Eagle Scout and a Truman Scholar, he earned his A.B. in government magna cum laude at Harvard, a master’s degree in political thought from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Jennifer S. Martin

Professor of Law
St. Thomas University School of Law

Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018

Jennifer S. Martin joined the law faculty at St. Thomas University in 2010, and is a visiting professor at Drexel University Kline School of Law during the fall semester 2018-19. She previously served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law and has also previously taught at University of Louisville and University of Pittsburgh. Professor Martin is the author of the American Bar Association's Annual Survey on Sales Law and has published many articles and given lectures on subjects such as wartime and conflict contracting, consumer rights, and lender liability. Upon graduation from Vanderbilt Law School, Professor Martin became an Associate with the international practice group of Baker & Botts, L.L.P., practicing in both the Houston and Dallas offices. A member of the Texas and American Bar Associations, Professor Martin was a Principal Attorney for Houston Industries Incorporated (now Reliant Energy), working on power generation transactions domestically and internationally. Professor Martin is a co-founder and contributor to the Commercial Law weblog. The blog takes up all issues related to commercial law, particularly the Uniform Commercial Code. The blog is a member of the Jurisdynamics Network. Professor Martin teaches courses in contracts, business associations and commercial law.

Victoria Nourse

Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center

Monday, Oct. 1, 2018

Victoria Nourse came to Georgetown after holding chairs at Emory University and the University of Wisconsin. She has been a visiting professor at Yale, NYU, and the University of Maryland law schools. Her most recent book, In Reckless Hands (Norton 2008), tells the real life drama of the 1942 Supreme Court case striking down state eugenics laws, a case announcing a right to marry and procreate. Professor Nourse has published widely on constitutional history, the separation of powers, legislation, and the criminal law. Professor Nourse began her career in New York, clerking for Judge Edward Weinfeld and practicing at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. She left private practice to serve as junior counsel to the Senate-Iran Contra Committee under Senators Rudman and Inouye. From there, she moved down Pennsylvania Avenue to argue appeals for the Department of Justice in the Reagan-Bush years. She concluded her career in practice as senior advisor to the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and now-Vice President Biden, on a variety of legislative matters, including the Violence Against Women Act. The story of her role in that fight is told in the 2009 book by Fred Strebeigh, Equal: Women Reshape American Law (Norton). Professor Nourse is Director of the law school’s Center for Congressional Studies.

Richard H. Frankel

Associate Professor of Law
Director, Federal Litigation and Appeals Clinic
Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law

Monday, Oct. 8, 2018

Richard Frankel studies the intersection of civil rights, civil procedure and federal courts. Under Professor Frankel’s direction, students in the clinic litigate appeals on behalf of indigent and other needy individuals in federal and state courts, in accordance with local student practice rules. Case areas that the Clinic has focused on include employment discrimination, immigration, prisoner civil rights, family law, and environmental protection. Before joining the law school faculty, Professor Frankel served as a teaching fellow and supervising attorney for the Georgetown University Law Center’s Appellate Litigation Program. Before that, he was the Goldberg-Deitzler Fellow for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice in Washington, D.C., where he litigated class-action consumer protection and civil rights cases. A graduate of Yale Law School, he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of Yale Law & Policy Review, and student director of the Community Legal Services Clinic. After law school, he clerked for Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge William C. Canby Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Lawrence B. Solum

Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center

Monday, Oct. 22, 2018

Lawrence B. Solum works in constitutional theory, procedure, and the philosophy of law. Professor Solum contributes to debates in constitutional theory and normative legal theory. He is especially interested in the intersection of law with the philosophy of language and with moral and political philosophy. His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the great debate between originalism and constitutional theory. He received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and received his B.A. with highest departmental honors in philosophy from the University of California at Los Angeles. While at Harvard, he served as an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he worked for the law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore in New York, and then clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to arriving at Georgetown University Law Center, Professor Solum was a member of the faculties at the University of Illinois, the University of San Diego, and the Loyola Marymount University and visited at Boston University and the University of Southern California. He is the Editor of Legal Theory Blog, an influential weblog that focuses on developments in contemporary normative and positive legal theory.

Elizabeth Sepper

Professor of Law
Washington University in St. Louis School of Law

Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018

Elizabeth Sepper is a scholar of religious liberty, healthcare, and antidiscrimination law. She is a fellow at Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) for the 2018-19 academic year, where she will be working on a project entitled Sex in Public: Public Accommodation Law from the Civil War to the Bathroom Wars. She is a co-editor of Law, Religion, and Health in the United States (Holly Fernandez Lynch, I. Glenn Cohen, & Elizabeth Sepper, eds. Cambridge Univ. 2017). Sepper received her J.D. and LL.M. in international legal studies from NYU School of Law and her B.A. in history from Boston University. Prior to joining the academy, she clerked for the Honorable Marjorie Rendell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and practiced human rights law.

Peter J. Spiro

Charles R. Weiner Professor of Law
Co-Director, Institute for International Law and Public Policy
Temple University Beasley School of Law

Monday, Nov. 19, 2018

Peter J. Spiro holds the Charles Weiner Chair in International Law. Before joining Temple’s faculty in 2006, Professor Spiro was Rusk Professor of Law at the University of Georgia Law School. A former law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court, Spiro specializes in international, immigration, and constitutional law. Spiro is the author of Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization (Oxford University Press 2008) and At Home in Two Countries: The Past and Future of Dual Citizenship (NYU Press 2016). Spiro has held fellowships at the European University Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Open Society Institute. He has also held visiting appointments at the University of Texas, the Australian National University, and Sungkyunkwan University. Spiro is a member of the International Mobility Treaty Commission and the Investment Migration Council, and a former member of the U.S. Department of State’s Historical Advisory Committee. He is co-chair of the Migration Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law. In addition to his 1990-91 Supreme Court clerkship, Spiro served as a law clerk to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also served as director for democracy on the staff of the National Security Council, as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser and as a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Spiro holds a B.A. from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Anna Roberts

Associate Professor of Law
Faculty Fellow, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality
Seattle University School of Law

Monday, Jan. 28, 2019

Anna Roberts is a scholar of evidence and criminal procedure, whose scholarship has addressed biases and disparities in the process of forming criminal records, with a particular focus on the peremptory challenge and implicit jury bias. It has also addressed consequences of conviction, with a particular focus on prior conviction impeachment and jury exclusion. Her current work focuses on the relationship between the two, exposing and challenging the weight and meaning given to criminal records in light of the flawed processes that led to them. During academic year 2018-19, Professor Roberts is a visiting professor at St John's University School of Law, where she is teaching evidence, contemporary topics in criminal law, and torts; she has also taught criminal law and criminal procedure. Previous positions included Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering at NYU School of Law; staff attorney (criminal defense) at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem; and judicial clerk to Judge Constance Baker Motley of the Southern District of New York. Professor Roberts holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Cambridge, where she graduated first in her class in Classics, earning a Starred First with Distinction. She graduated magna cum laude from NYU School of Law, where she was a Dean's Scholar, a Florence Allen Scholar, and a Member of the Order of the Coif.

Serena Mayeri

Professor of Law and History
University of Pennsylvania Law School

Monday, Feb. 4, 2019

Serena Mayeri’s scholarship focuses on the historical impact of progressive and conservative social movements on legal and constitutional change. Her book, Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2011) received the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association and the Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians. Mayeri's current book project, tentatively titled The Status of Marriage: Marital Supremacy Challenged and Remade, 1960-2000, examines the history of challenges to marriage's primacy as a legal institution and a source of public and private benefits. Mayeri teaches courses in family law, employment discrimination, gender and the law, and legal history. She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of History, and is a Core Faculty member in the Program on Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. In 2016, Mayeri was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians.

Michael Gerhardt

Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor in Constitutional Law
University of North Carolina Law School

Monday, April 8, 2019

Michael Gerhardt’s specialties include civil rights, the legislative process, the presidency, and separation of powers. He has written dozens of law review articles and several books. His extensive public service has included advising congressional leaders and White House officials on constitutional issues. He served as one of the eight members of President-Elect Bill Clinton's Justice Department transition team and drafted the administration's judicial selection policy. He has testified over a dozen times before major committees in the House and Senate. Professor Gerhardt has also participated in Supreme Court confirmation hearings for six of the nine justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court. He served as Special Counsel to the Clinton White House on Justice Stephen Breyer's confirmation; advised several senators on President Bush's nomination of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States in 2005; testified as an expert witness in Justice Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings in 2006; and served as Special Counsel to Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and the Senate Judiciary Committee for the nominations of Sonia Sotomayor (2009) and Elena Kagan (2010) to the Supreme Court. He served as Special Counsel to the Ranking Member and Senate Judiciary Committee for the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court (2017). Professor Gerhardt received a B.A. from Yale University, M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and J.D. from the University of Chicago. After graduating law school and before entering academia, he clerked for judges on the federal district and appellate courts; and he practiced law for two firms specializing in complex civil and criminal litigation. In academic year 2018-19, he will serve as the inaugural Richard Beeman Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Scholar in Residence and Director of Content at the National Constitution Center. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and has served on several major committees of the North Carolina Bar Association.