Thomas Jefferson School of Law offers an enriched and dynamic specialty that focuses on policy and interdisciplinary theories of legal jurisprudence. TJSL professors possess enormous expertise as former policymakers on the national and international world stage in a variety of fields including in the areas of employment, economics, education, the environment and land use, media and film, the arts, science, civil rights, religion, psychology, philosophy, medicine, bioethics and more. Whether it is offering path breaking congressional testimony on Capitol Hill, writing new legislation in the state halls of government, or challenging the fundamental tenets of legal doctrine from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, TJSL faculty are on the forefront of legal reforms and critical discourse in their respective fields of expertise. Our faculty challenge students to fundamentally re-think doctrinal and theoretical assumptions underpinning the law and the lawyering process itself filtered through the prism of socio-legal constraints. Students critically examine how the intended and unintended costs of rules and norms have broadly affected society and modern legal reforms. Students also have the opportunity to work closely with faculty through clinics, externships and directed studies on cutting edge issues of governmental regulation, policy development and scholarly workshops that assemble some of the nation's brightest thinkers and lawmakers.
Courses
Civil Justice Seminar
Gender Equality
K-12 & Higher Education Policy
Law & Film
Law & Medicine
Law & Psychology
Medicine & Bioethics
Natural Resources Law
Wildlife & Marine Life Law
Professor Susan Bisom-Rapp (Employment Discrimination; Employment Law; Globalization and the Workplace, International Labor & Employment Law; Labor Law) is a widely cited expert on employment discrimination and international and comparative workplace law. Her scholarship examines the effects on civil rights enforcement of employers' compliance efforts and attorneys' litigation strategies, and has influenced the disciplines of sociology and psychology. Her co-authored casebook, The Global Workplace: International and Comparative Employment Law - Cases and Materials (Cambridge University Press, 2007) (co-author with Roger Blanpain, William R. Corbett, Hilary K. Josephs and Michael J. Zimmer) is the first law school text on international and comparative employment law.
Professor Joy Delman (Health Care Liability; Reproductive Justice; Law and Medicine; Comparative Law, Medicine and Bioethics) has a varied background in civil litigation with an emphasis in medical malpractice. Professor Delman also served as counsel to a medical products corporation and is a member of the American College of Legal Medicine. She has authored "The Use and Misuse of Physician Extenders: Aiding and Abetting the Unauthorized Practice of Medicine" in the Journal of Legal Medicine.
Professor Julie Greenberg (Sexuality, Gender and the Law; Women and the Law; Comparative Family Law) is an internationally recognized expert on the legal issues relating to gender, sex, sexual identity and sexual orientation. Her path-breaking work on gender identity has been cited by a number of state and federal courts, as well as courts in other countries and has been instrumental in changing the legal definitions of male and female. She recently published the book Intersexuality and the Law:Why Sex Matters
Professor Marybeth Herald (Law and Psychology) has published articles exploring the legal and political relationship of the United States territories, the First Amendment and related gender issues, including "A Bedroom of One's Own: Law and Sexual Privacy After Lawrence v. Texas" in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism.
Professor Maureen Markey (Jurisprudence; Law & Literature) was a partner at Mulvaney, Kahan & Barry in San Diego and taught at the University of San Diego School of Law before joining the faculty at Thomas Jefferson. Her seminars focus on the role of argumentation and narrative in legal theory and jurisprudence. She has also written several article on law and religion, including "The Price of Landlord's 'Free' Exercise of Religion: Tenant's Right to Discrimination-Free Housing and Privacy" in the Fordham Urban Law Journal.
Professor David Steinberg (Law & Religion) has served as co-chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Civil Rights, and has served on the Executive Committee of the Association's Section on Law and Religion. His law & religion scholarship includes "Religious Exemptions as Affirmative Action" in the Emory Law Review and "Children and Spiritual Healing: Having Faith in Free Exercise" in the Notre Dame Law Review.
Professor Ellen Waldman (Bioethics Policy; Therapeutic Jurisprudence) was a fellow at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy in Charlottesville, Virginia. The following year she served as a fellow at the medical ethics department at the University of Virginia Medical School and directed a grant awarded by the Virginia Institute for the Humanities to educate hospital staff and patients about patient rights and principles of biomedical ethics. Her scholarship includes "Mediation at the End of Life: Getting Beyond the Limits of the Talking Cure" in the Journal of Dispute Resolution.
Associate Professor Madeline Kass (Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law, Wildlife & Marine Life Law) practiced law for close to a decade in the Seattle offices of Preston Gates & Ellis (now K&L Gates) and Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe where her practice focused primarily in the areas of land use and environmental compliance and litigation. Prior to entering private practice, she conducted immunology research at Harvard Medical School. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the AALS Natural Resources Section, on the Editorial Board of the ABA’s National Resources & Environment publication, as a Vice-Chair of the ABA Endangered Species Committee, and as a faculty advisor for the TJSL Environmental Law Society. She has also served on the Editorial Board of the Washington State Bar Association Environmental and Land Use Law Newsletter.
Associate Professor Leah Christensen (Legal Education Pedagogy; Educational Policy) focuses on empirical legal research including studies on legal education, and has presented at conferences sponsored by the American Association of Law Schools (AALS), the Institute of Law School Teaching (ILST), the Education Law Association and the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC). Her scholarship includes "Sticks, Stones And Schoolyard Bullies: Restorative Justice," and "Mediation And A New Way To Approach Conflict Resolution In Our Schools," in the Nevada Law Journal.
Associate Professor Julie Cromer Young (Law and Film; Lawyers and American Film) co-organized the Seventh Annual Women and the Law Conference Virtual Women: Gender Issues in Intellectual Property and focuses on law and media issues in her scholarship, including "How on Earth Terrestrial Laws Can Protect Geospatial Data" in the Journal of Space Law.
Associate Professor Maurice R. Dyson (K-12 & Higher Education Policy; Civil Rights; Critical Race Studies) was a Special Projects team attorney for the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and has also served as the national chairperson of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Education Law. Among his recent scholarship, he has written the first ever education law-critical race theory reader entitled Our Promise: Achieving Educational Equity for America's Children, Carolina Academic Press (Maurice R. Dyson, Daniel B. Weddle, eds.).
Associate Professor Kaimipono David Wenger (Critical Race Studies) has written several articles including "Nullificatory Juries" (with David A. Hoffman) in the Wisconsin Law Review and "Slavery as a Takings Clause Violation" in the American University Law Review, and "Causation and Attenuation in the Slavery Reparations Debate" in the University of San Francisco Law Review.
Associate Professor Rebecca Lee (Employment Law & Discrimination; Gender Equality) writes in the areas of employment discrimination and workplace policy, with a focus on issues of gender equality, how gender and race differences shape institutional norms, the role of leadership within organizations as well as the relationship between conceptions of equality and diversity. Her scholarship includes "The Organization as a Gendered Entity: A Response to Professor Schultz's The Sanitized Workplace" in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.
Associate Professor Luz Herrera (Civil Justice Seminar) focuses on efforts to close the access gap to legal services by promoting self-help centers, on-line legal services, pro-bono work, unbundling programs, prepaid systems and other services to underprivileged and middle income communities in San Diego County. Before entering academia, she operated a law firm in Compton, California, serving the underprivileged community. She has written "Reflections of a Community Lawyer" in The Modern American.
Adjunct Professor of Law Wayne Rosenbaum (Land Use Planning, Water Law) is special counsel to Foley & Lardner concentrating on environmental issues, including the development of cost effective compliance strategies for municipalities and industries regulated under the storm water provisions of the Clean Water Act.