New Faculty

GW Law Welcomes New Faculty Members

Neil H. Buchanan
Associate Professor of Law
BA, Vassar College
MA, PhD, Harvard University
JD, University of Michigan

Buchanan joined the GW Law faculty in 2007. He previously taught at Rutgers-Newark School of Law and was a visiting professor at NYU School of Law. He received his JD, magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 2002, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for Judge Robert H. Henry on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Prior to attending law school, Buchanan was an economics professor. He has held full-time faculty positions in economics at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Barnard College, Goucher College, and Wellesley College. He also served as the director of the Center for Advanced Macroeconomic Policy in Milwaukee and as a research associate at the Levy Institute, a public policy think tank in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Professor Buchanan’s current research concerns the long-term tax and spending patterns of the federal government, focusing on such issues as budget deficits, the national debt, and the long-run prospects for the Social Security system. He also is developing a long-term research project that asks how current policy choices should be shaped by concerns for the interests of future generations. His articles have been published in Tax Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Tax Notes, and Virginia Tax Review, as well as for refereed social science journals and for the online legal magazine FindLaw’s Writ. Buchanan writes regularly for the legal blog Dorf on Law (www.michaeldorf.org).

Lawrence Cunningham
Professor of Law
BA, University of Delaware
JD, Yeshiva University

Cunningham is an authority on law and accounting, particularly in corporate governance and securities regulation. His articles have appeared in Business Lawyer, and the Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. Among the dozen books he has written are, Introductory Accounting, Finance and Auditing for Lawyers, and Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America. Before joining GW Law in 2007, Cunningham had taught at Boston College Law School since 2002, serving a term there as associate dean for academic affairs. He taught at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law from 1992 to 2002, where he served a term as director of the Heyman Center on Corporate Governance and was recipient of the Professor of the Year Award in 2000. Cunningham has been a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, and a visiting lecturer at Central European University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and University of Navarra. Before entering academia, he practiced with Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Cunningham consults for boards of directors, law and accounting firms, and regulatory and standard-setting bodies and gives expert testimony in various matters. He was director of the Independence Standards Board’s Task Force on Practice Structures for Auditing Firms from 1998 to 2001. Cunningham has been featured in Forbes and Money, and has contributed analysis to various media outlets including, National Law Journal, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Phyllis Goldfarb
Jacob Burns Foundation Professor of Clinical Law and Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs
BA, Brandeis University
Ed.M Harvard University
JD, Yale University
LLM, Georgetown University

Goldfarb joins GW Law from Boston College Law School, where among other courses she taught in and administered a criminal justice clinic. Goldfarb taught at Northern Illinois University College of Law where she designed and taught in the school’s first clinical program, and at the University of Paris X, in Nanterre, France. While an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow in Criminal Trial Advocacy, Goldfarb served as a teacher and supervising attorney in Georgetown University’s Juvenile Justice Clinic while earning an LLM. Goldfarb’s scholarly focus is on the relationship between law practice and legal theory and its impact on legal education. Her publications and presentations have addressed divergent topics such as clinical education, death penalty, criminal procedure, jurisprudence, feminist theory, and domestic violence. She is a faculty member of the Persuasion Institute, teaching narrative strategies to death penalty litigators, and co-organized the first national conference of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation. She has represented a number of clients on a pro bono basis, including death row inmates and one of the Framingham Eight, who was incarcerated for killing her batterer. Based on her work, Goldfarb wrote “Describing Without Circumscribing: Questioning the Construction of Gender in the Discourse of Intimate Violence” (1996). She also wrote “A Theory-Practice Spiral: The Ethics of Feminism and Clinical Education” (1991), among many other articles.

Tanya K. Hernandez
Leroy Sorenson Merrifield Research Professor of Law
BA, Brown University
JD, Yale University

Hernandez joined the GW Law faculty in 2007, after a decade of teaching at Rutgers University Law-Newark and St. John’s University School of Law. She has also been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, and Brooklyn Law School. She teaches courses on property, trusts and estates, critical race theory, and race and the law. Hernandez’s scholarly interest is in the study of comparative race relations. Her work in that area has been published in the California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and many other publications. Before entering academia, Hernandez clerked for U.S. District Judge Jaime P. Pieras Jr. in Puerto Rico. She then received a fellowship to the Center for Reproductive Law & Policy in New York, where she litigated challenges to women’s health care restrictions and clinic violence. Thereafter, she worked as a staff attorney for the HIV Unit of Brooklyn Legal Services, where she litigated in Family Court and Housing Court on behalf of AIDS infected clients.

Sarah Lawsky
Associate Professor of Law
BA, University of Chicago
JD, Yale University
LLM, New York University

Lawsky teaches and writes in the area of taxation. Before entering academia, she worked at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, where she provided advice on federal, state, and local tax issues to corporations, partnerships, and other business entities, as well as tax-exempt organizations, and high-net-worth individuals. She earned a BA in philosophy with an allied field of math from the University of Chicago, a JD from Yale University, and an LLM in tax law from New York University. While in law school, Lawsky was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal. Her published works include Redefining Mental Disability in the Treasury Regulations 100 Tax Notes 559 (2003), and A Nineteenth Amendment Defense of the Violence Against Women Act, 109 Yale Law Journal 783 (2000), for which she was awarded the Michael Egger prize for best student contribution to the Yale Law Journal on current social problems. Prior to attending law school, she helped veterans with psychiatric disabilities obtain social security and veterans benefits. 

LeRoy C. (Lee) Paddock
Associate Dean for Environmental Law Studies
BA, University of Michigan
JD University of Iowa

Prior to coming to GW Law, Paddock was director of environmental legal studies at Pace University Law School from 2002 to 2007. After graduating from the University of Iowa Law School with high honors, he served as a law clerk to Judge Donald Lay of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. From 1978 until 1999, Paddock was an assistant attorney general with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, where he served as director of environmental policy for 13 years, as manager of the Office’s Agriculture and Natural Resources Division, and as a member of its executive committee. He has served as a senior consultant for the National Academy of Public Administration on several projects since 1999. He also was a visiting scholar at the Environmental Law Institute between 1999 and 2002, focusing on clean air act, state-federal relationship, and enforcement issues. Paddock has served on numerous national panels including the Aspen Institute’s Series on Environment in the 21st Century, and the American National Standard Institute’s ISO 14000 Environmental Management Systems Council. Currently, he chairs the Committee for Innovations, Management Systems, and Trading for the American Bar Association’s Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources.

Visiting Faculty

David Barnes
Visiting Professor of Law BA, Dartmouth College
MA, PhD, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
JD, University of Pennsylvania

Barnes is the Seton Hall University Distinguished Research Professor of Law. Professor Barnes began teaching at Seton Hall in 1999 after being the Charles W. Delaney Professor of Law at the University of Denver and teaching with the economics and law faculties at Syracuse University. Barnes’ educational background includes undergraduate study at Dartmouth College and Wellesley College, an MA and PhD in economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His casebooks and treatises include The Law of Intellectual Property; Basic Tort Law: Cases, Problems, Statutes, and Materials; Cases and Materials on Law and Economics; Statistical Evidence in Litigation: Methodology, Procedure, and Practice; and Statistics As Proof: Fundamentals of Quantitative Evidence. He has written dozens of articles in various areas of law including: torts, intellectual property, contracts, antitrust, environmental law, evidence, remedies, and the use of statistical and scientific methods in court.

John Bessler
Visiting Associate Professor of Law
BA, University of Minnesota
JD, Indiana University
MFA, Hamline University

Bessler joins GW Law from the University of Minnesota Law School, where he has taught a death penalty course as an adjunct professor of law since 1998. He previously clerked for U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Mason of the District of Minnesota and practiced law for many years in the area of civil litigation as a partner at the Minneapolis law firm of Kelly & Berens, PA. A leading authority on the death penalty, Bessler is the author of four books, including three on the subject of capital punishment. Two of those books, Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America (Northeastern University Press, 1997), and Legacy of Violence: Lynch Mobs and Executions in Minnesota (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), were Minnesota Book Award finalists. He also has studied international human rights law at Oxford University, and his law review articles have appeared in the Indiana Law Journal, the Arkansas Law Review, and elsewhere.

Kimberly N. Brown
Visiting Professor of Law
BA Cornell University
JD University of Michigan

Brown is an associate professor of law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Previously, she served as an associate independent counsel in the Office of the Independent Counsel (Whitewater investigation) and as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Civil Division of the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, where she handled a variety of cases of national significance in federal court. She was, subsequently, of counsel at the law firm of Caplin & Drysdale, in Washington, D.C., where she specialized in campaign/election law litigation and representation of asbestos creditors in numerous mass tort bankruptcies. After law school, where she was an editor of the Michigan Law Review, Brown clerked for the Honorable Charles R. Richey of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Brown teaches the courses civil procedure, federal courts, and administrative law.

Jessica Clark
Visiting Associate Professor
BA, Lawrence University
MS.Sc., Syracuse University
JD, George Washington University

Clark joins the Law School as a visiting associate professor after spending three years at the Office of the General Counsel, Department of the Navy, as a law clerk and later as assistant counsel.  She practiced federal procurement law and federal employment law. While in law school, she was a dean’s fellow in the Legal Research and Writing Program, the senior managing editor of the Public Contracts Law Journal, and a member of the winning team in the 2004 McKenna Long & Aldridge Gilbert A. Cuneo Government Contracts Moot Court Competition. She also received first prize in the 2004 Public Contract Law Journal Writing Competition. Clark published her note in the Public Contract Law Journal and a paper in State Tax Notes.  In the 2006–07 academic year, she taught as an adjunct professor in the Law School’s Legal Research and Writing Program.  

Danielle Conway-Jones
Visiting Professor of Law
BS, New York University
JD, Howard University
LLM, George Washington University

Conway-Jones teaches in the areas of intellectual property, government contracts, and Internet law and policy at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she is director of the Hawaii Procurement Institute. Named Outstanding Professor of the Year in 2003, and awarded the University of Hawaii Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching in 2004, Professor Conway-Jones completed a 2006–07 Fulbright Senior Scholar post in Australia before arriving at GW. Conway-Jones co-authored the treatise, Intellectual Property, Software, and Information Licensing: Law and Practice (2007) and the casebook, Intellectual Property Licensing Law: Theory and Application (forthcoming). Her publications appear in the Howard Law Journal, University of Richmond Law Review, Santa Clara Law Review, Asian–Pacific Law and Policy Journal, Washington University Global Studies Law Review, Computer Law Review and Technology Journal, Army Lawyer, and Michigan Journal of Race and Law. She has lectured in the United States, Europe, China, Palau, Micronesia, Australia, and Mongolia on topics including globalization, government contracts, intellectual property, and indigenous peoples’ rights. Conway-Jones also has delegate status at the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues. She currently serves as a major in the U.S. Army Reserve assigned as a professor at the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School. She is also of counsel at Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing in Honolulu.

Alexa Freeman
Visiting Associate Professor of Clinical Law
BA, George Washington University
JD, American University
LLM, Yale University

Freeman joins the faculty of GW Law as director of the Outside Placement Program. Prior to assuming this position, she was a senior policy fellow at the Federal Legislation Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center, where she helped launch Workplace Flexibility 2010, an initiative to support development of a comprehensive national policy to identify viable flexibility options for employers and employees. Previously, Freeman was a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, where she litigated federal court class action cases challenging the unconstitutional treatment of prisoners and juvenile offenders, and directed its AIDS Project, writing and speaking widely on the subject. She also worked on the House Judiciary Committee for (then) Congressman Charles Schumer. Freeman is an avid supporter of D.C. statehood, and she has served on the D.C. Constitutional Convention, the American Bar Association’s Committee on AIDS and the Criminal Justice System, the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Police Hiring, the D.C. Commission for Women, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the D.C. Commission on Crime and Justice. Her scholarship is focused on women’s rights, the criminal justice system, and distributive justice. Freeman has taught in externship programs since 1997, first at American University’s Washington College of Law, and at GW since 1999.

Lee Harris
Visiting Associate Professor of Law
BA, Morehouse College
JD, Yale University

Harris’s recent publications have appeared in Columbia Human Rights Law Review, University of Maryland Journal of Race, Class & Gender, Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, and University of Memphis Law Review, among other legal journals. His paper on medical liability caps was among 12 papers selected on a blind peer-review basis for inclusion in the Yale/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum in 2007. Currently, Harris is working on a short treatise on corporations and other business organizations, which is scheduled to be published in 2008 by the Carolina Academic Press.

Vincent Johnson
Visiting Professor of Law
BA, St. Vincent College
JD, University of Notre Dame
LLM, Yale University

Johnson is professor of law at St. Mary’s University School of Law where he served as associate dean for administration and associate dean for academic and student affairs. He teaches and writes in the areas of torts, professional responsibility, legal malpractice, and remedies. Johnson clerked for the New York Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. He also served as a fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court where he assisted Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist with his non-case related duties. Johnson is the co-author of Legal Malpractice Law: Problems and Prevention, and co-editor of A Concise Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, both scheduled for publication by Thomson West in fall 2007. A recent article about regulating lobbyists was published in the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. A Fulbright Scholar at Renmin University in China and the University of Bucharest, Johnson served in 2006–07 as an Open Society Institute International Scholar in Ukraine. He also has served as Pro Bono Legal Specialist on legal and judicial ethics in the ABA Rule of Law Programs in Mongolia and Moldova. He has lectured at more than 20 law schools in Russia and China, and for 12 years directed a summer program on international and comparative law at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Johnson received the Administration of Justice Award from the U.S. Supreme Court Fellow Alumni Association, the Order of Art and Culture from the mayor and city council of Innsbruck, Austria, and an honorary doctorate from St. Vincent College. He is a member of the American Law Institute.

Garrett Power
Visiting Professor of Law
BA, LLB, Duke University
LLM, University of Illinois

Power is professor emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Law. Throughout his career, Power has maintained an active research interest in the public regulation of water and land resources. During his early work, while concentrating on environmental law, he prepared the first comprehensive legal study of the Chesapeake Bay and the first draft of the Maryland wetland law. This effort culminated in his co-authorship of the book, Chesapeake Waters, in 1983. Power’s more recent scholarship has considered both constitutional law and legal history. He has prepared both teaching materials and articles considering the constitutional limitations on land use controls, environmental regulations, and governmental exactions. His historical work has resulted in a series of monographs considering the origins of the land system in Maryland and development of the city of Baltimore. As president of Westminster Preservation Trust, Power directs the stewardship of the historic Western Burying Ground (the site of Edgar Allan Poe’s grave) and the operation of the restored 19th Century Westminster Hall. He works closely with the Maryland State Archivist in the effort to make legal records accessible for historical study in a digital environment. He also serves on the executive council of the Adventure Sports Institute.

Elizabeth L. Young
Visiting Associate Professor of Law
BA, Hendrix College
JD, George Washington University

Young joins the Law School faculty to direct the Immigration Clinic for the 2007–08 academic year. While a student at GW Law, she was executive guide editor of the George Washington International Law Review, and attended the GW–Oxford Summer Program in International Human Rights Law. She also spent a year working in the Law School’s Immigration Clinic and was the 2004 recipient of the Richard C. Lewis Jr. Memorial Award for Clinical Excellence. Young worked for three years at the San Francisco Immigration Court as an attorney adviser through the Department of Justice Honors Program. At the Court, her duties included writing final orders, analyzing and presenting changes in federal law to the immigration judges, supervising judicial law clerks, and managing the Court’s intern program.  

(From left) Associate Professor of Government Contracts Law Christopher R. Yukins, Visiting E.K. Gubin Professor of Government Contracts Law Danielle M. Conway-Jones, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Law Steven L. Schooner, and E.K. Gubin Professor Emeritus of Government Contracts Law Frederick J. Lees. Claire Duggan Government Contracts Colloquium: Socioeconomic Programs in the European Union The Government Contracts Program hosted a colloquium to discuss such topics as socioeconomic programs in European procurement systems, the EU’s traditional opposition to socioeconomic preferences, why the EU may now accept socioeconomic preferences, and lessons for the United States.