List of Famous Law Professors
- Barack Obama, born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961, has been a significant figure in American politics. He made history as the first African American to hold the office of President of the United States. Before his presidency, he served as a senator for Illinois from 2005 to 2008. Obama's early life was marked by diverse experiences that shaped his worldview. His mother Stanley Ann Dunham - an anthropologist - and father Barack Obama Sr. - an economist from Kenya - divorced when he was young. He spent part of his childhood living with his grandparents in Hawaii and four years in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather Lolo Soetoro. These formative years instilled in him a deep appreciation for different cultures and perspectives. His career path is characterized by dedication to public service and law. After earning degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School – where he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review – Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago before serving three terms representing the 13th District on the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004. As President (from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017), Obama passed several key pieces of legislation including The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known commonly as Obamacare) which expanded health insurance coverage for Americans; Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Bill aimed at financial sector regulation; and Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal Act allowing gay people openly serve military.More Barack Obama
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- Elizabeth Warren, a name profoundly associated with American politics, is renowned for her prodigious intellect and unwavering commitment to public service. Born in Oklahoma in the year 1949, she faced financial hardships during her early years that shaped her perspective on economic inequality - a theme that would later become central to her political career. She started her professional journey as an elementary school teacher but with her irrepressible thirst for knowledge, she soon embarked on her academic pursuits, earning a law degree from Rutgers Law School. Warren's impressive career trajectory is marked by notable contributions to academia and law, prior to her entry into politics. She served as a law professor at various prestigious institutions such as the University of Texas Law School, University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Harvard Law School. However, her expertise lies in bankruptcy and commercial law where she worked on defining the contours of American economic policy. Her scholarly endeavors, particularly her work on the impact of bankruptcies on middle-class families, earned her national recognition. In the political sphere, Warren emerged as an influential figure when she was appointed as the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008. She was instrumental in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a testament to her commitment to protecting consumers against financial abuses. Later, she was elected as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts in 2012, becoming the first woman to serve in this capacity for the state. As a senator, Warren has championed progressive causes, advocating for affordable healthcare, reducing student loan debt, and reining in Wall Street. Her political acumen, coupled with her dedication to social justice, has positioned her as a formidable figure in the political landscape, establishing Elizabeth Warren as an advocate for the everyday American.
- Cass Robert Sunstein FBA (born September 21, 1954) is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012. Earlier, as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School for 27 years, he wrote influential works on among other topics, regulatory and constitutional law. Since leaving the White House, Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School.
- Hugh Hewitt (born February 22, 1956) is an American radio talk show host with the Salem Radio Network and an attorney, academic, and author. Generally a conservative, and a devout Catholic, he writes about law, society, politics, and media bias in the United States. Hewitt is President and CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation, a law professor at Chapman University School of Law, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a regular political commentator on NBC News and MSNBC.
- Elena Kagan (; born April 28, 1960) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama in May 2010, and confirmed by the Senate in August of the same year. She is the fourth woman to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court. Kagan was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from Princeton University, the University of Oxford, and Harvard Law School, she clerked for a federal Court of Appeals judge and for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel, and later as policy adviser under President Bill Clinton. After a nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which expired without action, she became a professor at Harvard Law School and was later named its first female dean. In 2009, Kagan became the first female Solicitor General of the United States. President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy arising from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. The United States Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 63 to 37. She is considered part of the Court's liberal wing, but tends to be one of the more moderate justices of that group. She wrote the majority opinion in Cooper v. Harris, a landmark case restricting the permissible uses of race in drawing congressional districts.
- John Choon Yoo (born July 10, 1967) is a Korean-American attorney, law professor, former government official, and author. Yoo is currently the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, he served as the Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice, during the George W. Bush administration. He is best known for his opinions concerning the Geneva Conventions that attempted to legitimize the War on Terror by the United States. He also authored the so-called Torture Memos, which concerned the use of what the Central Intelligence Agency called enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding. In 2009, two days after taking office, President Barack Obama in Executive Order 13491 repudiated and revoked all legal guidance on interrogation authored by Yoo and his successors in the Office of Legal Counsel between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009.
- Michael C. Dorf is an American law professor and a scholar of U.S. constitutional law. He is currently a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. In addition to constitutional law, Professor Dorf has taught courses in civil procedure and federal courts. He has written or edited three books, including No Litmus Test: Law Versus Politics in the Twenty-First Century, and Constitutional Law Stories, as well as scores of law review articles about American constitutional law. He is also a columnist for Findlaw.com and a regular contributor to The American Prospect. Dorf is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
- Neal Kumar Katyal (born March 12, 1970) is an American lawyer and partner at Hogan Lovells, as well as Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Katyal served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States from May 2010 until June 2011. Previously, Katyal served in as an attorney in the Solicitor General's office as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the U.S. Justice Department. Katyal has argued more Supreme Court cases than any other minority group lawyer in American history. In 2017, American Lawyer Magazine named Katyal its coveted Grand Prize Litigator of the Year for both the 2016 and 2017 years.
- Elizabeth Jane Kelsey is a professor of law at the University of Auckland and a prominent critic of globalisation. Jane Kelsey has an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from the University of Auckland. She has worked at the University of Auckland since 1979 and was appointed to a personal Chair in Law in 1997. At Cambridge "left-thinking Marxist scholars ... taught her the political theory that ... underpins her daily work". She is a key member of the Action Resource Education Network of Aotearoa, and is actively involved in researching and speaking out against the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, free trade and corporate-led globalisation. She is also actively involved in campaigning for the New Zealand Government's full recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi and opposed the controversial seabed and foreshore legislation. Kelsey is an outspoken critic of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks, of which New Zealand is a part. Kelsey took part in actions over the 1981 Springbok tour.
- Ann Althouse (born January 12, 1951) is an American law professor and blogger.
- Margaret Anne Ganley Somerville, (born 13 April 1942) is Professor of Bioethics at University of Notre Dame Australia. She was previously Samuel Gale Professor of Law at McGill University.Somerville was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and educated at Mercedes College (Springfield, South Australia). She received a A.u.A. (pharm.) from the University of Adelaide in 1963, a Bachelor of Law degree (Hons. I) and the University Medal from the University of Sydney in 1973, and a D.C.L. from McGill University in 1978. In 1978, she was appointed assistant professor in the law faculty at McGill. She was appointed an associate professor in 1979 and an associate professor in the faculty of medicine in 1980. In 1984, she became a full professor in both faculties, and in 1989, she was appointed the Samuel Gale Professor of Law. From 1986 to 1996, she was the founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law and was appointed acting director in 1999. She also taught seminars on advanced torts and comparative medical law at McGill. Her archive is held at the McGill University Archives.In November 2006, she gave the five annual Massey Lectures on CBC Radio in Canada. An expanded version of the lectures was published in Canada, Australia, and the United States in book form as The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit.
- Adam Winkler is an actor and television director.
- Eugene Volokh ( VOL-ək;; born February 29, 1968) is a Ukrainian-American legal scholar known for his scholarship in American constitutional law and libertarianism, as well as his prominent legal blog "The Volokh Conspiracy". He is the Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, and is an academic affiliate at the law firm Mayer Brown.
- Noah R. Feldman (born May 22, 1970) is an American author and Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Much of his work is devoted to analysis of law and religion.
- William Stewart Simkins (August 25, 1842 – February 27, 1929) was a Confederate soldier and professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin. While a Citadel cadet, he quite possibly fired the first shot of the American Civil War.
Stephen Gillers
Stephen Gillers is a professor at the New York University School of Law. He is often cited as an expert in legal ethics. After graduating from Brooklyn College he received his J.D. in 1968 from the New York University School of Law. Professor Gillers' political activism includes calling on then-presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 to name former U.S. President Bill Clinton as his running mate. NY Times Op-Ed Professor Gillers has also been critical of U.S. Supreme Court Justices accepting paid trips to legal seminars. Professor Gillers annually co-authors Regulation of Lawyers: Statutes and Standards.- Todd J. Zywicki (born January 18, 1966) is a George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, teaching in the areas of bankruptcy and contracts.He has also works for the Global Economics Group since 2009 in the area of financial regulation.
- Glenn Harlan Reynolds (born August 27, 1960) is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, and is known for his American politics weblog, Instapundit.
- Mary Ann Glendon (born October 7, 1938) is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a former United States Ambassador to the Holy See. She teaches and writes on bioethics, comparative constitutional law, property, and human rights in international law. She is pro-life and "writes forcefully against the expansion of abortion rights."
- Robert Peter George (born July 10, 1955) is an American legal scholar, political philosopher, and public intellectual who serves as the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He lectures on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties, philosophy of law, and political philosophy. George, a Catholic, is considered one of the country's leading conservative intellectuals.In addition to his professorship at Princeton, he is the Herbert W. Vaughan senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, a research fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
- Annette Gordon-Reed (born November 19, 1958) is an American historian and law professor. She is currently the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard University, where she is also the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a professor of history in the university's Faculty of Arts & Sciences. Gordon-Reed is noted for changing scholarship on Thomas Jefferson regarding his relationship with Sally Hemings and her children. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for Nonfiction and 15 other prizes in 2009 for her work on the Hemings family of Monticello. In 2010, she received the National Humanities Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship also known as the MacArthur "Genius Award." Since 2018, she has served as a trustee of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
- Kris William Kobach (; born March 26, 1966) is an American politician who served as the 31st Secretary of State of Kansas. A former Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party and member of the City Council of Overland Park, Kansas, he was the Republican nominee in Kansas's 3rd congressional district in the 2004 election, losing to Democratic incumbent Dennis Moore.Kobach came to prominence over his hardline anti-immigration views and his involvement in the diffusion of high-profile anti-immigration ordinances in various American towns. Kobach is also known for his calls for stronger voter ID laws in the United States and a Muslim registry. He has made claims about the extent of voter fraud in the United States that studies and fact-checkers have concluded are false or unsubstantiated.As Secretary of State of Kansas, Kobach implemented some of the strictest voter identification laws in the United States and fought to remove nearly 20,000 registered voters from the state's voter rolls. Following considerable investigation and prosecution, Kobach secured nine convictions for voter fraud; all were cases of double voting, and most involved voters who had misunderstood their voting rights.Kobach announced in June 2017 that he would run in the 2018 primary for Governor of Kansas against then-Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer, who became the Governor in January 2018 following the resignation of Sam Brownback. After narrowly defeating Colyer in the Republican primary, Kobach was defeated by Democrat Laura Kelly in the general election.In late March 2019, the Associated Press reported that President Trump was considering creating a post of "immigration czar" to coordinate efforts among federal agencies involved in the issues, with Kobach being one of two top candidates for the job. On July 8, 2019, Kobach launched his 2020 campaign for the U.S. Senate seat of retiring Kansas Senator Pat Roberts and implied he had the support of President Donald Trump.
- Amir Attaran (Persian: امیر عطاران) is a Canadian-American-Iranian law and medicine professor. Currently, Attaran is a Full Professor in both the Faculty of Law and the School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
- Derrick Albert Bell Jr. (November 6, 1930 – October 5, 2011) was an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. In 1971, he became the first tenured African-American professor of law at Harvard Law School, and he is often credited as one of the originators of critical race theory along with Richard Delgado, Charles Lawrence, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia Williams. He was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law from 1991 until his death. He was also a dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.
- Harold Hongju Koh (born December 8, 1954) is an American lawyer and legal scholar. He served as the Legal Adviser of the Department of State. He was nominated to this position by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2009, and confirmed by the Senate on June 25, 2009. He departed as the State Department's legal adviser in January 2013, and returned to Yale University as a law professor, being named a Sterling Professor of International Law.
- John G. Palfrey (born 1972) is an American educator, scholar, and law professor. He is a notable authority on the legal aspects of emerging media, and he is an advocate for Internet freedom, including increased online transparency and accountability as well as child safety. In March 2019, he was named the president of the MacArthur Foundation effective September 1, 2019. Palfrey was the Head of School at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts from 2012 to 2019. He has been an important figure at Harvard Law School and served as executive director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society from 2002 to 2008.
- Dawn Elizabeth Johnsen (born August 14, 1961) is an American lawyer and the Walter W. Foskett Professor of Constitutional law, who is currently on the faculty at Maurer School of Law at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She worked at the Office of Legal Counsel in the United States Department of Justice from 1993 to 1998 and served as acting Assistant Attorney General from 1997 to 1998; she was twice nominated to the post in the Obama Administration. Johnsen's first nomination was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2009 in a party line vote, but was not acted on by the full Senate before it recessed at the end of 2009. Obama then renominated her to the post on January 20, 2010 but on April 9, 2010, Johnsen withdrew her name from consideration.
- Martha Louise Minow (born December 6, 1954) is the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University. She served as the Dean of the Law School between 2009 and 2017, and on June 30, 2017, she stepped down from her post as Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and during 2017-2018, she held the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence. in 2018, she assumed her current position as the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University. She has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981. Minow was one of the candidates mentioned to replace U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens upon his retirement.
- Bruce Arnold Ackerman (born August 19, 1943) is an American constitutional law scholar. He is a Sterling Professor at Yale Law School. In 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.
- Bradley A. Smith (born 1958) is the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. He previously served as Commissioner, Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2000 and 2005. He is best known for his writing and activities opposing campaign finance regulation.
- Ian Ayres (born 1959) is an American lawyer and economist. He is a professor at the Yale Law School and at the Yale School of Management.
- Thane Rosenbaum (born 1960) is an American novelist, essayist, and law professor. He is the director of the Forum on Law, Culture, & Society, hosted by NYU Law School, where he is a Distinguished Fellow.
- Bernhard Schlink (born 6 July 1944) is a German lawyer, academic, and novellist. He is best known for his novel The Reader which was first published in 1995 and became an international bestseller.
- Randall L. Kennedy (born September 10, 1954) is an American Law professor and author at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law and focuses his research on the intersection of racial conflict and legal institutions in American life. He specializes in the areas of contracts, freedom of expression, race relations law, civil rights legislation, and the Supreme Court.Kennedy has written six books: Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption; Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word; Race, Crime, and the Law; Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal; The Persistence of the Color Line; and For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law. Additionally, Kennedy has published numerous collections of shorter works. Many of his articles can be found in periodicals and newspapers such as: The American Prospect, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Georgetown Law Journal, Harvard BlackLetter Journal, and The Boston Globe. His book Race, Crime, and the Law won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
- Akhil Reed Amar (born September 6, 1958) is an American legal scholar, an expert on constitutional law and criminal procedure. Formerly the Southmayd Professor of Law at Yale Law School, he was named Sterling Professor of Law in 2008 and Adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia Law School in 2016. A Legal Affairs poll placed Amar among the top 20 contemporary US legal thinkers.
- Spencer A. Overton (born August 11, 1968) is an American lawyer, President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and law professor at George Washington University Law School. He is a leading election law scholar, and is a tenured Professor of Law at George Washington University.
- Jonathan L. Zittrain (born 24 December 1969) is an American professor of Internet law and the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. He is also a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and co-founder and director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Previously, Zittrain was Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford and visiting professor at the New York University School of Law and Stanford Law School. He is the author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, as well as co-editor of the books, Access Denied (MIT Press, 2008), Access Controlled (MIT Press, 2010), and Access Contested (MIT Press, 2011). Zittrain works in several intersections of the Internet with law and policy including intellectual property, censorship and filtering for content control, and computer security. He founded a project at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society that develops classroom tools. In 2001 he helped found Chilling Effects, a collaborative archive created by Wendy Seltzer to protect lawful online activity from legal threats. He also served as vice dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard.
- Douglas W. Kmiec (; born September 24, 1951) is an American legal scholar, author, and former U.S. ambassador. He is the Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University School of Law. Kmiec came to prominence during the 2008 United States presidential election when, although a Republican, he endorsed Democrat Barack Obama. In July 2009, he was nominated by President Obama to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Malta. He was confirmed by the Senate and served for close to two years as ambassador to Malta. He resigned his post effective May 31, 2011.
- Jeffrey L. Fisher (born 1970) is an American law professor and U.S. Supreme Court litigator who has argued thirty-eight cases and worked on dozens of others before the Supreme Court. He is co-director of the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
- Eben Moglen is a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center.
- Brian Leiter (; born 1963) is an American philosopher and legal scholar who is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and founder and Director of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values. A review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews described Leiter as "one of the most influential legal philosophers of our time", while a review in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies described Leiter's book Nietzsche on Morality (2002) as "arguably the most important book on Nietzsche's philosophy in the past twenty years."Leiter taught from 1995 to 2008 at the University of Texas School of Law, where he was founder and Director of the Law and Philosophy Program. He joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2008. His scholarly writings have been primarily in legal philosophy and Continental philosophy, especially Nietzsche and Marx. He has also been a visiting professor at universities in the United States and Europe, including Yale University and Oxford University. He is founding editor of a book series entitled Routledge Philosophers, and (with Leslie Green) of Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law. He is also a prolific blogger. Leiter was also the founder and for 25 years the editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report ("PGR"), an influential but also controversial ranking of philosophy PhD programs in the English-speaking world. After repeated protests, one in 2002 and one in 2014, Leiter retired and turned over editorship of the PGR to Berit Brogaard, a philosopher at the University of Miami, and Christopher Pynes, a philosopher at Western Illinois University.
- Burt Neuborne is the Norman Dorsen Professor of Civil Liberties at New York University School of Law and the founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice.
- Jack M. Balkin (born August 13, 1956) is an American legal scholar. He is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. Balkin is the founder and director of the Yale Information Society Project (ISP), a research center whose mission is "to study the implications of the Internet, telecommunications, and the new information technologies for law and society." He also directs the Knight Law and Media Program and the Abrams Institute for Free Expression at Yale Law School.Balkin publishes the legal blog, Balkinization, and is also a correspondent for The Atlantic. He is a leading scholar of Constitutional and First Amendment law. In addition to his work as a legal scholar, he has also written a book on memes and cultural evolution and has translated and written a commentary on the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, or I Ching.
- Richard Allen Epstein (born April 17, 1943) is an American legal scholar known for his writings on subjects such as torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. Epstein is currently the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. Epstein's writings have extensively influenced American legal thought. In 2000, a study published in The Journal of Legal Studies identified Epstein as the 12th-most cited legal scholar of the 20th century. In 2008, he was chosen in a poll taken by Legal Affairs as one of the most influential legal thinkers of modern times. A study of legal publications between 2009 and 2013 found Epstein to be the 3rd-most frequently cited American legal scholar during that period, behind only Cass Sunstein and Erwin Chemerinsky. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985.
- John C. "Jack" Coffee, Jr. (born November 15, 1944) is the Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia University Law School.
- Erwin Chemerinsky (born May 14, 1953) is an American lawyer and scholar known for his studies in United States constitutional law and federal civil procedure. He served as the founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law from 2008 to 2017, and is currently the dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.A study of legal publications between 2009 and 2013 found Chemerinsky to be the second-most frequently cited American legal scholar, behind Cass Sunstein and ahead of Richard Epstein.
- Joel Conrad Bakan (born 1959) is an American-Canadian writer, jazz musician, filmmaker, and professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia.Born in Lansing, Michigan, and raised for most of his childhood in East Lansing, Michigan, where his parents, Paul and Rita Bakan, were both long-time professors in psychology at Michigan State University. In 1971, he moved with his parents to Vancouver, British Columbia. He was educated at Simon Fraser University (BA, 1981), University of Oxford (BA in law, 1983), Dalhousie University (LLB, 1984) and Harvard University (LLM, 1986). He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Brian Dickson in 1985. During his tenure as clerk, Chief Justice Dickson authored the judgment R. v. Oakes, among others. Bakan then pursued a master's degree at Harvard Law School. After graduation, he returned to Canada, where he has taught law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University and the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law. He joined the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law in 1990 as an associate professor. Bakan teaches Constitutional Law, Contracts, socio-legal courses and the graduate seminar. He has won the Faculty of Law's Teaching Excellence Award twice and a UBC Killam Research Prize.Bakan has a son from his first wife, Marlee Gayle Kline, also a scholar and Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia. Professor Kline died of leukemia in 2001. Bakan helped establish The Marlee Kline Memorial Lectures in Social Justice to commemorate her contributions to Canadian law and feminist legal theory. He is now married to Canadian actress and singer Rebecca Jenkins. His sister, Laura Naomi Bakan is a provincial court judge in British Columbia, and his brother, Michael Bakan, is an ethnomusicologist.
- Jack Landman Goldsmith (born September 26, 1962) is an American lawyer and Harvard Law School professor who has written extensively in the fields of international law, civil procedure, federal courts, conflict of laws, and national security law. He has been "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament."In addition to being a professor at Harvard, Goldsmith is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a co-founder of the Lawfare Blog along with Brookings fellow Benjamin Wittes and Texas Law professor Robert M. Chesney.
- Pamela Susan Karlan (born February 1959) is a professor of law at Stanford Law School. A leading liberal legal scholar on voting rights and political process, she served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights in the United States Department of Justice Civil Division from 2014 to 2015.
- Charles Rothwell Nesson (born February 11, 1939) is the William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. He is author of Evidence, with Murray and Green, and has participated in several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark case Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals.In 1971, Nesson defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case. He was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the case against W. R. Grace and Company that was made into the book A Civil Action, which was, in turn, made into the film of the same name. Nesson's nickname in the book, Billion-Dollar Charlie, was given to him by Mark Phillips, who worked with him on the W.R. Grace case.Nesson is currently "interested in advancing justice in Jamaica, the evolution of the Internet, as well as national drug policy."
- Bernardine Rae Dohrn (née Ohrnstein; born January 12, 1942) is a retired law professor and a former leader of the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground was a domestic terror group responsible for bombings of the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and several police stations in New York, as well as the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that killed three of its members. As a leader of the Weather Underground, Dohrn helped to create a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government and was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, where she remained for three years. After coming out of hiding, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping and was later jailed for contempt of court. From 1991 to 2013, Dohrn was a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law. She is married to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground.
- Charles James Ogletree, Jr. (born December 31, 1952) is an American attorney and law professor who is currently the Jesse Climenko Professor at Harvard Law School, the founder of the school's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, and the author of numerous books on legal topics.
- Randy Evan Barnett (born February 5, 1952, in Chicago) is an American lawyer and the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at Georgetown University, where he teaches constitutional law, contracts, and legal theory. He writes about the libertarian theory of law, contract theory, constitutional law, and jurisprudence and has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court. After attending Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Barnett worked as a prosecutor in Chicago. Barnett's first academic position was at the Chicago-Kent College of Law of the Illinois Institute of Technology. He later became the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University, where he served as the faculty adviser for the Federalist Society. He joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center in 2006. Barnett is a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute. His book The Structure of Liberty won the Ralph Gregory Elliot Book Award in 1998. In 2008 he was awarded a Fellowship in Constitutional Studies by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
- Adrian Năstase (Romanian pronunciation: [adriˈan nəsˈtase]; born 22 June 1950) is a Romanian former politician who was the Prime Minister of Romania from December 2000 to December 2004. He competed in the 2004 presidential election as the Social Democratic Party (PSD) candidate, but was defeated by centre-right Justice and Truth (DA) Alliance candidate Traian Băsescu. He was the President of the Chamber of Deputies from 21 December 2004 until 15 March 2006, when he resigned due to corruption charges. Sentenced to two years in prison in July 2012, he attempted suicide before beginning his term in the penitentiary. Released in March 2013, he was sentenced to four years in another case in January 2014, but released that August.
- Francis Anthony Boyle (born March 25, 1950) is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He has served as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina and has been a staunch supporter of the rights of indigenous peoples and Palestinians.
- Tim Wu is an American lawyer, professor at Columbia Law School, and contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is best known for coining the phrase network neutrality in his 2003 paper Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, and popularizing the concept thereafter. Wu has also made significant contributions to antitrust policy and wireless communications policy, most notably with his "Carterfone" proposal.Wu is a scholar of the media and technology industries, and his academic specialties include antitrust, copyright, and telecommunications law. Wu was named to The National Law Journal's "America's 100 Most Influential Lawyers" in 2013, as well as to the "Politico 50" in 2014 and 2015. Additionally, Wu was named one of Scientific American's 50 people of the year in 2006, and one of Harvard University's 100 most influential graduates by 02138 magazine in 2007. His book The Master Switch was named among the best books of 2010 by The New Yorker magazine, Fortune magazine, Publishers Weekly, and other publications. From 2011 to 2012, Wu served as a Senior Advisor to the Federal Trade Commission, and from 2015–2016 he was senior enforcement counsel at the New York Office of the Attorney General, where he launched a successful lawsuit against Time-Warner cable for falsely advertising their broadband speeds. In 2016 Wu joined the National Economic Council in the Obama White House to work on competition policy.
- Phillip E. Johnson (born June 18, 1940) is a retired UC Berkeley law professor, opponent of evolutionary science, co-founder of the pseudo-scientific intelligent design movement, author of the "Wedge strategy" and co-founder of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) . He has described himself as "in a sense the father of the intelligent design movement". He is a critic of Darwinism, which he has described as "fully naturalistic evolution, involving chance mechanisms and natural selection". The wedge strategy aims to change public opinion and scientific consensus, and seeks to convince the scientific community to allow a role for theism, or causes beyond naturalistic explanation, in scientific discourse. Johnson has argued that scientists accepted the theory of evolution "before it was rigorously tested, and thereafter used all their authority to convince the public that naturalistic processes are sufficient to produce a human from a bacterium, and a bacterium from a mix of chemicals."The scientific community considers Johnson's defense of intelligent design to be pseudoscientific.
- Michael William McConnell (born May 18, 1955 in Louisville, Kentucky) is a constitutional law scholar who served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from 2002 until 2009. Since 2009, McConnell has served as Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. He is also a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and Senior Of Counsel to the Litigation Practice Group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
- Eric Andrew Posner (; born December 5, 1965) is an American law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a professor of international law, contract law, and bankruptcy, among other areas. As of 2014, he was the 4th most-cited legal scholar in the United States. He is the son of retired Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner.
- Daniel J. Solove (; born 1972) is a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School. He is well known for his academic work on privacy and for popular books on how privacy relates with information technology.Solove wrote three books about privacy that had been published from 2004 to 2008. Among other works, he authored The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet, and The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy In the Information Age (ISBN 0-814-79846-2). Solove has been quoted by the media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and NPR. He is also a member of the organizing committee of the Privacy and Security Academy and the Privacy Law Salon. In 2011 Tony Doyle wrote in The Journal of Value Inquiry that Solove "has established himself as one of the leading privacy theorists writing in English today."
