Feminist Scholars
At Washington College of Law, you will interact with many faculty members who bring a feminist perspective to their work.
The WCL Faculty is noted for its scholarship and expertise in women's legal studies. In addition, law school faculty have provided training services for judges and advocates, and training and technical assistance for regional institutions, law schools, and governments throughout the world on international women's rights and gender, law and development issues.
Below are only a few of the faculty, adjunct faculty and staff at WCL with expertise in gender and the Law.
Professor Ahmad is a Professor of Law at WCL. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1993 and his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1996. He also was a law clerk for a federal district judge in Vermont. Prior to joining WCL, he was a Skadden Fellow and a staff attorney at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles. In addition, he worked with the South Asian Network, a non-profit social service agency. His work in Los Angeles focused on immigrants' rights, and in particular, the rights of immigrant workers-the majority of whom are women-exploited in the Los Angeles garment industry, as well as the impact of welfare reform on immigrant communities. Currently he is working with the Women and International Law Program to expand the teaching of gender in legal education in India. In addition, he is doing ongoing comparative research on gender, labor, and migration in the garment industries of Los Angeles and Ahmedabad, India. His areas of teaching include the International Human Rights Clinic and Immigration Law.
Professor Bridgewater is a Professor of Law at WCL, where she teaches Property, Wills and Trusts, and Reproduction and the Law. She is also a lawyer and reproductive rights advocate/activist and has been involved in abortion clinic defense and the women's health movement for many years. Professor Bridgewater consults and participates in legal defense of reproductive health care clinics, service providers and activists. She has worked extensively with activists and advocates in Latin America on reproductive rights issues. Professor Bridgewater writes in the area of reproduction and the law, legal history, feminism and race in the law and queer legal theory. Her book, Breeding a Nation: Slavery and the Pursuit of Reproductive Freedom will be published by South End Press in Spring 2006.
Professor Burkstrand-Reid is an adjunct member of the faculty who teaches Sex-Based Discrimination and Family Law. A graduate of WCL, she is currently a solo practitioner specializing in sex equity litigation. Previously, she specialized in media law, complex civil litigation and had an active pro bono family law and women’s rights practice. Professor Burkstrand-Reid was a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Professor Carle is a Professor of Law at WCL teaching torts, employment discrimination and legal ethics. Professor Carle has a particular interest in and has published many articles examining the history and sociology of gender, race, class and socio-economic status in the legal profession. Prior to coming to WCL, she worked for the U.S. Justice Department in the Civil Rights Division, pursuing appeals in employment discrimination and other cases, and as a lawyer for a plaintiff's side labor and employment law firm. Professor Carle has published a book called Lawyers' Ethics and the Pursuit of Social Justice: A Critical Reader (forthcoming 2005 NYU Press), that contains a chapter on feminist legal ethics.
Janie Chuang is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. Professor Chuang specializes in issues relating to violence against women, specifically, trafficking in women. As an advisor on trafficking issues for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Professor Chuang participated in the drafting of the UN Trafficking Protocol to the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime, advocating for the inclusion of human rights protections for trafficked persons. Prior to joining WCL in 2004, Professor Chuang practiced with the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, representing foreign governments in international litigation/arbitration and pro bono clients in asylum and human rights cases. Professor Chuang is the U.S. Member of the International Law Association’s Feminism and International Law Committee.
Professor Clark is a Professor of Law at WCL, teaching Property Law and a seminar on feminist jurisprudence. Prior to joining WCL as a visiting faculty member, Professor Clark was a Visiting Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale Law School, and a Supreme Court Fellow with the Federal Judicial Center. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and Harvard Law School, she clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Montgomery, Alabama. She has published a series of articles on the history of women in the legal profession and as judges in particular. Currently, she is at work on a series of pieces concerning law's regulation of personhood attachments to land.
Professor Dodd joined the WCL faculty in September of 2005. She teaches and specializes in constitutional law and theory, civil rights litigation, and jurisprudence. Professor Dodd received her JD from Yale Law School in 2000, and completed her PhD in Politics at Princeton University in 2004. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the history of Sec. 1983, from its origins in the Civil Rights Act of 1871 to the contemporary era, with a special focus on the political debates regarding civil rights enforcement strategies. Her most recent research is entitled, “DeShaney v. Winnebago County: Governmental Neglect and the “Blessings of Liberty,” in Civil Rights Stories, Myriam Gilles & Risa Goluboff, editors (forthcoming, Foundation Press).
Professor Farley is an Associate Professor of Law at WCL and teaches courses in Intellectual Property Law, U.S. Trademark Law, International and Comparative Trademark Law, and Law and the Visual Arts. She also serves as Associate Director of the Intellectual Property Law Clinic. Her writing has included work on women in legal academia, and she is interested in exploring intersections between gender issues and intellectual property. She has participated in the previous two IP/Gender conferences at WCL and is helping to plan the third, which will take place in the Fall of 2005. For more details, please check the online calendar.
As Public Interest Coordinator, Charlene Gomes oversees the Office of Public Interest, coordinating the Pro Bono Honors Pledge Program, the Public Interest/Public Service Scholars Program and other public interest programming at WCL. From 1999-2003, Ms. Gomes was Program Director for the Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program and the Leadership and Advocacy for Women in Africa Fellowship Program at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she worked with women's rights leaders across the U.S. and in the Southern Africa Region. Publications include: The Need for Full Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage (The Humanist Magazine, September/October 2003), and Partners are Parents: Challenges Faced by Gays Denied Marriage, (The Humanist Magazine, November/December 2003). Charlene is a member of the Virginia State Bar Association, the National Association of Law Placement Public Service Committee, and a Board Member of the Washington Council of Lawyers.
Dean Grossman has supported numerous gender-related initiatives at Washington College of Law, including the creation of a new LL.M specialization in Gender and the Law within the International Legal Studies Program. In addition, Dean Grossman served as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights' (IACHR) first Special Rapporteur on Women's Rights (1996-2000), and authored the IACHR's first report on women's rights. He has also worked on cases involving gender issues, including Maria Eugenia Morales de Sierra (Guatemala), at the IACHR.
Ms. Harris is the Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. She is an international human rights attorney specializing in civil and political rights, gender equality and domestic accountability and implementation of international norms. She has done significant work around assessing national compliance with CEDAW in various countries around the world. She has lived and worked in Israel, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Morocco, Botswana, Macedonia and beyond. Ms. Harris is an active participant in the joint Center-WILP Gender and Legal Education in India Project.
Professor Hughes joined the WCL faculty in 2007. Previously she taught at Florida International University College of Law, where she was also affiliated with the Women’s Studies Department. Her interests include sales and secured transactions. She has published several articles on gender and law, including Contradictions, Open Secrets, and Feminist Faith in Enlightenment, in the Hastings Women’s Law Journal (2002) and Same-Sex Marriage and Simulacra: Exploring Conceptions of Equality, in the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review (1998).
Professor Hutchinson, Professor of Law, teaches Constitutional Law, Equitable Remedies, and seminars in Critical Race Theory and Equal Protection Theory. He has written extensively on issues related to Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, Law and Sexuality, and social identity theory. Before joining the faculty at WCL, Professor Hutchinson was an Associate Professor at Southern Methodist University School of Law. Prior to his career in teaching, he practiced commercial litigation in New York City.
Bille Jo Kaufman is the Associate Dean for Library Information Resources and teaches and specializes in; advanced legal research, cyberlaw; criminal procedure; legal research and writing, and law librarianship. In addition she serves as the Editor for the AALS Women & the Law Newsletter. Prior to joining the faculty of WCL in 2003, Billie Jo was director of the Law Library & Technology Center and Associate Professor of Law at Shepard Broad Law Center, Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fl., where she held several positions within the law library system from 1987 until 2003. She is a member of the ABA, the AALL, AALS, Southeast Association of Law Libraries, the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C., Computer Assisted Legal Instruction, and Consortium of Southeast Law Libraries.
Professor Klepper is the Assistant to the Director for the Law and Government Program. Prior to joining WCL, Ms. Klepper served as counsel to Senator Russell Feingold and as counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy, where she worked on nominations, the judiciary, and criminal law issues. She is a contributor to leading publications on the federal judiciary, constitutional law, and health care law and policy, and teaches Health Law: Legislative and Regulatory Process. She also served for several years as a health care attorney in private practice, where she represented a diverse group of health care industry clients on a wide variety of regulatory, legislative, and governance matters.
Professor Kohn is a visiting member of the WCL faculty. She teaches Gender and the Law. She is also the deputy director of the Georgetown Law Center’s Domestic Violence Clinic, where she has taught since 1998. Previously, Professor Kohn focused on disability rights, both in Congress and at the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. She worked at the legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, focusing on reproductive rights and disability policy. Most recently, Professor Kohn published in the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly on the conflict between first amendment rights and effective remedies for victims of domestic violence.
A Professor of Law at WCL, Professor Kovacic-Fleischer teaches sex-based discrimination, contracts, and remedies. She earned her J.D. degree from Northeastern University Law School and her B.A. from Wellesley College. She clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit and for U.S. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. She also practiced with a Washington, D.C. law firm. She has written numerous articles on gender discrimination issues as well as articles and books on remedies.
Daniela Kraiem is the Associate Director of the Women and the Law Program. She teaches Gender and the Law and Gender Perspectives Across the World. Prior to joining WCL, she practiced labor and employment law, and was a staff attorney at the Child Care Law Center.
Sharon Levin is an adjunct faculty member. She teaches Sex-based Discrimination and Legislation. She currently serves as the Executive Director of Women's Prerogative. Previously, Professor Levin was Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center. She also worked for Representative Nita Lowey (for whom she managed the bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues and the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus) and Senator Charles Schumer. During her years of private legal practice, she represented several women's organizations on a pro-bono basis on matters that included domestic violence, Title VII and child care.
Adrienne Lockie is a Practitioner-in-Residence with the Women and the Law Clinic. She began her teaching career at Rutgers School of Law-Newark in 2004 where she was the Director of the Domestic Violence Advocacy Project and taught in the Women’s Rights Litigation Clinic. Prior to entering academia, Ms. Lockie represented victims of domestic violence as a Staff Attorney with Safe Horizon’s Domestic Violence Law Project in Manhattan. She has also been a Blackmun Fellow, serving as a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, and before that was a judicial law clerk for Judge Carol Amon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She taught at New York University’s School of Social Work and in the Women’s Studies Program at Rutgers. Ms. Lockie is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.
Angie McCarthy is the Program Coordinator for the Women and the Law Program. She holds an MPhil from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in International Peace Studies with a focus on Women, Peace and Security and a BA in International Studies with a Minor in Women's Studies from Manhattanville College in New York. She has worked with several women's organizations both domestically and abroad including the NGO Committee on the Status of Women at the United Nations and the New Women's Movement in South Africa.
Gay McDougall is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence. An expert in human rights law, Ms. McDougall served for many years as the Executive Director of Global Rights. She is currently an Independent Expert on Minority Issues for the United Nations.
Fernanda Nicola is Assistant Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law of American University. She also taught at the Harvard Law School and the New England School of Law in Boston. Dr. Nicola current is an S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School and she has received her PhD in Comparative Law from the University of Trento, Italy. She has served as an intern at the European Parliament in the Civil Rights, Civil Liberties Committee and in the Council of Europe, Political Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly. Dr. Nicola has developed an expertise in European and comparative law through her work and scholarship in both Europe and North America on private law and local government law. She is publishing an Italian reader on United States Feminist Jurispridence in 2007 with Carocci (Rome).
Amelia Parker is the Program Coordinator of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at WCL. Amelia received her J.D. in 2006 from WCL, where she served as co-founder of the Genocide Teaching Project. After receiving the Patrick Stewart Human Rights Scholarship in 2000, she traveled to Ghana and worked for the Legal Resources Centre, where she researched the right to work of Sierra Leonean refugees, and the Centre for Public Interest Law, researching the human rights implications of the privatization of water in Ghana.
The Executive Director of the law school's Health Law Project, LL.M. Program on Law and Government, and Practitioner in Residence, Ms. Parver received her J.D. degree from American University Washington College of Law and her B.PT. from McGill University. After practicing physical therapy for fifteen years and completing her legal education, she specialized in health care law as a law firm associate and partner, and a health care trade association president and CEO. Her areas of specialization include: fraud and abuse prevention and compliance; general health law and policy; privacy; and medical liability. She has written and spoken widely about these issues both across the country and internationally. Her main research area at WCL involves the effect of the medical malpractice insurance crisis on women's health, particularly women of color.
Teresa Godwin Phelps joined the faculty at Washington College of Law in 2006 as Professor of Law and Director of the Legal Rhetoric Program. Before that, she was on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame Law School where she taught and directed legal writing since 1980. She holds three degrees from Notre Dame, including a Ph.D. in English and one degree from Yale Law School. At Notre Dame she was also a Fellow of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Professor Phelps teaches Legal Rhetoric and has published widely in the field, including a seminal article, “The New Legal Rhetoric” in 1986 that helped to establish a new legal writing pedagogy. She was a founding member of the Legal Writing Institute and served on its Board of Directors, and she is a member of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Her other teaching and academic interests include law and literature, international truth commissions, women and the law, and human rights, and she has published over thirty articles and three books, most recently Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, paper 2006). She has lectured internationally on women’s rights and on truth commission reports. She often gives presentations and seminars on improving legal writing to other legal writing teachers, practicing attorneys, and judges.
Victoria Philips is the Assistant Director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic and teaches Communications Law. She headed the mass media legal policy office at the Federal Communications Commission and practiced intellectual property and communications law in Washington, D.C. before joining the clinic faculty. Professor Phillips is one of the principal organizers of the annual Symposium on IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections, and recently published "Commodification, Intellectual Property and the Women of Gee's Bend," in the American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and Law.
Nancy D. Polikoff is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches in the areas of family law, civil procedure, and sexuality and the law. Previously, she supervised family law programs at the Women’s Legal Defense Fund (now National Partnership for Women and Families), and before that she practiced law as part of a feminist law collective. For 30 years, she has been writing about and litigating cases involving lesbian and gay families. Her articles have appeared in numerous law reviews, and her history of the development of the law affecting lesbian and gay parenting appears as a chapter in J. D’Emilio, W. Turner, and U. Vaid, eds., Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights (2000). She helped develop the legal theories in support of second-parent adoption and visitation rights for legally unrecognized parents, and she was successful counsel in In re M.M.D., the 1995 case that established joint adoption for lesbian and gay couples in the District of Columbia, and Boswell v. Boswell, the 1998 Maryland case overturning restrictions on a gay noncustodial father’s visitation rights. She is currently at work on her forthcoming book, Valuing All Families, to be published by Beacon Press in 2007.
Adeen Postar joined the library faculty as the Deputy Director of the Pence Law Library in 2004. Professor Postar has had extensive experience in law firm, academic and government libraries. She is the Associate Editor of State Practice Materials: Annotated Bibliographies published by Hein.
Susana SáCouto is the Director of the War Crimes Research Office (WCRO) at American University Washington College of Law, where she also teaches a seminar on "Gender, Cultural Differences and International Human Rights Law." She has also co-taught a course on "International Justice and Domestic Accountability" at WCL's summer Academy for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. Prior to joining the WCRO, Susana was the Director of Legal Services for Women Empowered Against Violence (WEAVE), a non-profit organization assisting survivors of domestic violence in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Susana has worked with the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and with the Center for Human Rights Legal Action in Guatemala. In addition, she is a member of the Steering Committee of the American Society of International Law's Women in International Law Interest Group and of the International Law Association (American Branch) Committee on Feminism and International Law. From 1999 to 2002, she co-chaired the Immigration and Human Rights Committee of the DC Bar's International Law Section. Particular areas of interest include domestic remedies for international gender-based crimes and pattern evidence of sexual violence as evidence of genocide.
Ms. Saez is the International Programs Coordinator at WCL. She supervises the J.D. dual degree programs with the University of Ottawa in Canada, the University Alfonso X El Sabio in Madrid, Spain, and the University of Paris-Nantere in France. She also directs the Summer Law Program in Chile. The recipient of the 1997 "Presidente de la República" Scholarship (in Chile), she received her LL.M. from Yale Law School. Before coming to WCL she worked as faculty at the University of Chile Law School teaching jurisprudence and feminist legal theory. She has also taught feminist jurisprudence at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law and in the Department of Social Studies at the University of Chile. Ms. Saez has also worked for the Inter-American Development Bank and was part of the Chilean team in the negotiations of the Free Trade Agreement between Chile and Canada. Along with WILP Ms. Saez is currently working on the development of gender initiatives in Latin American Law Schools. In this regard she works closely with Red Alas, a network of Latin American legal scholars.
Professor Shalleck is a Professor of Law at WCL and the Carrington Shields Scholar. She founded and directs the Women and the Law Program and Women and International Law Program. She teaches the Women & the Law Clinic, Family Law, Feminist Theory and a seminar on Legal Theory and Legal Pedagogy. She writes and lectures widely about gender and the law, clinical education, gender and international law, and family law. She is active in national and international efforts to reshape the law school curriculum and legal pedagogy. She has served in many capacities for the Association of American Law Schools and was a member of the Board of the Society of American Law Teachers. Professor Shalleck was a member of the DC Task Force on Gender Bias in the Courts. Her writing focuses on clinical education, feminist theory, family law and child neglect.
Professor Smith is a Professor of Law at WCL, where she co-teaches in the Community Economic Development Law Clinic. She is also the Project Director for the United States Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections Cooperative Agreement on Addressing Staff Sexual Misconduct with Offenders. In November, 2003, Professor Smith was appointed to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission by the United States House of Representatives Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi (D. CA). Prior to her faculty appointment at WCL, Professor Smith was the Senior Counsel for Economic Security at the National Women's Law Center and Director of the Center's Women in Prison Project and Child and Family Support Project. She is a 1984 graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, and a magna cum laude graduate of Spelman College in 1980. Professor Smith is an expert on issues affecting women in prison and has published and spoken widely on those issues. She has received numerous honors, including the prestigious Kellogg National Fellowship in 1993. She was inducted into the D.C. Women's Hall of Fame in 1998 for her work on behalf of low-income women in the District of Columbia. Most recently, she was awarded the Emalee C. Godsey Research Award for her article, Battering, Forgiveness and Redemption.
Jane Stoever is the Director of the Domestic Violence Clinic and a Practitioner-in-Residence. Prior to joining WCL, she taught classes on family law and trial advocacy at Georgetown University Law Center's Domestic Violence Clinic, where she was a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow and a Graduate Teaching Fellow. Ms. Stoever's responsibilities at Georgetown Law included supervising students in all stages of litigating civil protection order cases, and representing clients in domestic violence and criminal contempt cases. She served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Michael Wolff of the Supreme Court of Missouri, and previously worked at Legal Aid of Western Missouri and Life Span Center for Legal Services and Advocacy in Chicago. Ms. Stoever is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was a student attorney at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, where she represented women who had been abused in domestic, housing, and benefits cases.
Anthony E. Varona teaches Contracts, Administrative Law, Media Law, and Introduction to Public Law, and serves as the Director of the S.J.D. Program. Before joining the WCL faculty he served as general counsel and legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay civil rights organization. He is an active member of the Hispanic National Bar Association and the National Lesbian and Gay Lawyers Association and is also on the national board of GLAAD. Professor Varona's scholarship has included articles concerning civil rights, employment discrimination, hate crimes, and communications law.
Dennis Ventry's research interests include tax policy, tax theory and history, public finance, standards of tax practice, tax shelters, family taxation, and the taxation of same-sex couples. He writes a column for Tax Notes magazine, "Policy and Practice." His current projects include two studies describing how the tax system reflects and reinforces gender norms and prevailing family forms.
Diane Weinroth teaches in the Women and the Law Clinic. She also has had a private practice specializing in family law and child abuse and neglect.
