From Botswana to Berkeley, Diverse Group of Visiting Faculty Members Join Law School

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New York, Sept. 15, 2009 – A former judge in Botswana who doubles as a
novelist, two of Israel’s leading legal experts, and a highly accomplished constitutional law scholar are among 15 professors visiting Columbia Law School during the 2009–10 academic year.

Visiting professors and scholars join the Law School’s world-renowned faculty to offer their diverse perspectives and expertise on vital legal issues. Through faculty seminars, lectures, and conferences, as well as informal gatherings, these visitors engage their peers at the Law School with lively intellectual exchanges. In addition, a number of visitors teach courses, complementing an already broad and innovative curriculum.

This year, the visiting faculty members and scholars-in-residence are:
         
Akhil R. Amar, is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School. One of the nation’s most influential scholars on constitutional law and criminal procedure, Amar co-edited the leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking. Amar clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer when he was a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals and served as a consultant to the TV series, The West Wing.         
 
John Armour, the Justin W. D’Atri Visiting Professor of Law, Business &
Society, is a law professor at the University of Oxford. Armour has integrated legal and economic analysis to look at how changes in bankruptcy and corporate law have affected the economy.
 
Neil B. Cohen, the Joseph F. Cunningham Visiting Professor of Commercial
and Insurance Law, is a professor at Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches commercial law and contracts. Cohen has been a key participant in major law-reform projects, with respect to commercial transactions, and currently serves as the director of research on the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code.
 
Dennis Curtis is a scholar-in-residence at the Law School. A clinical professor emeritus of law and professorial lecturer in law at Yale Law School, Curtis is an expert on professional responsibility, legal professions, campaign financing, and sentencing.
 
Unity Dow is the first woman to be appointed as a justice in the High Court of Botswana, where she heard civil and criminal appeals. She retired in April after 10 years on the bench. Dow, who will teach a course on land rights, is also a human rights activist who co-founded various organizations for HIV/AIDS awareness and women’s rights, such as AIDS Action Trust and Metlhaetsile Women’s Information Centre. Dow has also written four novels, many of which deal with the struggle between traditional and Western values.
 
Melvin Eisenberg ’56, the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Visiting Professor of Law, is the author of numerous books and has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, a Guggenheim fellow, and a Fulbright senior scholar. He has been a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley since 1966.
 
Klaus J. Hopt has held visiting posts at many universities and law schools in Europe, Japan, and the United States. His main interests lie in corporate governance and European corporate and financial integration.
 
Michael Knoll, the Nathaniel Fensterstock Visiting Professor of Law, is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he is also co-director of the Center for Tax Law and Policy. Knoll will teach corporate finance and law and economics at the Law School.
 
Shahar Lifshitz is a law professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he focuses on contract law, family law, and Jewish law, especially the philosophical bases of these fields. Together with Israeli Supreme Court President Dorit Benish, Lifshitz co-chairs the forum for cooperation between the Israeli Supreme Court and Israeli legal academia.
 
Susan Marks is a professor of public international law at King’s College London. Her research centers on international law and human rights, and draws from the traditions of critical theory. In her scholarship, Marks has addressed issues relating to democracy, imperialism, torture, and hunger.
 
Thomas Miles, the James S. Carpentier Visiting Professor of Law, is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where he received his Ph.D. in economics. Miles served as a law clerk to Judge Jay S. Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has taught federal criminal law, federal regulation of securities, torts, and the economic analysis of law. He is also a co-editor of The Journal of Legal Studies.
 
Anne Joseph O’Connell, the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law, teaches
civil procedure and administrative law at the University of California, Berkeley. O’Connell clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 during the 2003 term, after working two years in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
 
Judith Resnik is a scholar-in-residence at the Law School. Resnik is a professor at Yale Law School, where she teaches courses on civil procedure and federalism, as well as local and global interventions to diminish inequality.
 
Deborah L. Rhode is a leading scholar in the fields of legal ethics, gender law, and public policy. An author of 20 books, she is the director of the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession. Rhode served as senior counsel to Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on presidential impeachment issues during the Clinton administration.
         

Yuval Shany is a law professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has published a number of books and articles on international courts and arbitration tribunals, along with publications on other international law issues, such as criminal law and humanitarian law. Shany has also been a research fellow at the Israeli Democracy Institute.

 
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School joins its traditional strengths in international and comparative law, constitutional law, administrative law, business law, and human rights law with pioneering work in the areas of intellectual property, digital technology, sexuality and gender, criminal law, and environmental law.