American University Washington College of Law Welcomes New Faculty

Stephen I. Vladeck Named Associate Dean for Scholarship

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON, DC, August 16, 2011 – American University Washington College of Law welcomes Amanda Leiter, L. Song Richardson, and Jonas Anderson to the full-time faculty. In addition to these appointments, the law school’s Professor Stephen I. Vladeck has been named the Associate Dean for Scholarship beginning this fall. A total of seven visiting professors and practitioners-in-residence will join the law school faculty this semester as well.

“We are honored to have such an outstanding group of professors join our exceptional faculty,” said Dean Claudio Grossman. “They will bring diverse legal teaching, scholarship, and service backgrounds to the law school, and I am certain they will have an extremely positive impact on future lawyers.”

Stephen I. Vladeck, Professor of Law & Associate Dean for Scholarship

Stephen I. Vladeck, professor of law, will serve as the associate dean for scholarship beginning in fall 2011. Vladeck’s teaching and research focus on federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, national security law, and international criminal law. He is a nationally recognized expert on the role of the federal courts in the war on terrorism and, prior to joining the law school faculty in 2007, he was part of the legal team that successfully challenged the Bush Administration’s use of military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Additionally, Vladeck, who has won awards for both his teaching and his writing, has co-authored amicus briefs in a number of other lawsuits challenging the U.S. government’s surveillance and detention of terrorism suspects. He is senior editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of National Security Law. Vladeck is a 2004 graduate of Yale Law School.

Amanda Leiter, Associate Professor of Law

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Amanda Leiter spent two years as a clean air litigator at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she developed and pursued judicial challenges to EPA rules regulating industrial air pollution. That work followed three post-law school clerkships: the first with the Hon. Nancy Gertner of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts; a second with the Hon. David Tatel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; and a third with United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. Leiter has also visited at Georgetown University Law Center, where she taught administrative law and government processes. At CatholicUniversityLaw School, Leiter taught administrative law, environmental law, and torts. Her teaching and research interests include administrative law and process, and environmental law and policy.

L. Song Richardson, Associate Professor of Law

L. Song Richardson is an expert on criminal law and procedure. Her current research utilizes the science of implicit social cognition to study criminal theory, criminal procedure and policing. Prior to her appointment at the law school, Richardson was associate professor of law and co-director of the Center for Law & Science at DePaul University. Richardson’s career has included partnership at one of the nation’s most elite boutique criminal law firms, where she represented high-profile criminal cases. Prior to that, she earned distinction as a state and federal public defender. She has also served as a Skadden Arps Public Interest Fellow with the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, and later as Assistant Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. As a classically trained pianist, she has earned international distinction for her piano performances, which include featured performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Richardson earned her JD from the Yale Law School.

Jonas Anderson, Assistant Professor of Law

Jonas Anderson specializes in patent law and intellectual property. He joins the law school faculty from Berkeley Law School where he was the Microsoft Research Fellow. Prior to Berkeley, he clerked for Judge Alan D. Lourie on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington D.C. He also worked as an associate at Latham & Watkins, focusing primarily on patent litigation and transactions involving intellectual property. His current research focuses on trade secrets, patent litigation, and patent claim construction. He is drafting one of the first casebooks devoted to the law of trade secrecy along with Professors Peter Menell, Robert Merges, and Mark Lemley. Additionally, he is currently working on an empirical project evaluating the last 10 years of patent claim construction jurisprudence at the Federal Circuit.Anderson received his JD from Harvard Law School.

Visiting Professors and Practitioners-in-Residence

  • Jorge Contreras, visiting associate professor, is the acting director of the Intellectual Property Program and Senior Lecturer in Law at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He will teach IP in Cyberspace, Technology Licensing Agreements, and Property.
  • Nabila Isa-Odidi, practitioner-in-residence, was an Intellectual Property Litigation associate at Morrison & Foerster, LLP. She will teach in the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic.
  • Juan Mendez, visiting professor, is the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and the former President of the International Center for Transitional Justice. He will teach International Law, International Human Rights, Advanced Human Rights, and the Prevention of Genocide.
  • Carl Monk, visiting professor, was the executive director of the Association of American Law Schools. He will teach Civil Procedure, Comparative Media Law, Comparative Perspectives of the First Amendment, and Higher Education Law.
  • Glen Staszewski, visiting associate professor, is the associate dean of research and associate professor, A.J. Thomas Faculty Scholar at Michigan State University College of Law. He will teach Civil Procedure.
  • Andrew Taslitz, visiting professor, is a professor at Howard University School of Law, and will teach Criminal Law.
  • Rangeley Wallace, practitioner-in-residence, was an adjunct professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, and will teach in the Disability Rights Law Clinic.

American University Washington College of Law

In 1896, American University Washington College of Law became the first law school in the country founded by women. More than 100 years since its founding, this law school community is grounded in the values of equality, diversity, and intellectual rigor. The law school’s nationally and internationally recognized programs (in clinical legal education, trial advocacy, international law, and intellectual property to name a few) and dedicated faculty provide its 1700 JD, LL.M., and SJD students with the critical skills and values to have an immediate impact as students and as graduates, in Washington, DC and around the world. For more information, visit wcl.american.edu.

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