Professors

Charles Nesson is the William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the founder 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 also 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 attended Harvard College as an undergraduate before attending Harvard Law School where he became one of only a handful of people in the history of the school to have graduated summa cum laude. After graduation, Nesson was a law clerk to Justice John Marshall Harlan II on the United States Supreme Court for 1965 term. He then worked as a special assistant in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under John Doar. His first case, White v. Crook, made race and gender-based jury selection in Alabama unconstitutional.

He joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1966, was tenured in 1969 and served as the associate dean from 1979-1982.

Since joining the Whittier Law faculty in 2004, Professor Pritikin has endeavored to integrate his real-world litigation experience into the classroom. Professor Pritikin’s involvement in oral advocacy began in law school, where he was the regional champion in the ATLA Student Trial Advocacy Competition and a semi-finalist in Harvard’s prestigious Ames Moot Court Competition. Upon graduating, he spent several years at a national commercial litigation firm, during which time he not only participated in two federal trials, but also served as an adjunct coach for the highly successful Byrne Trial Advocacy Program at Loyola Law School.

In 2008, Professor Pritikin helped form, and became the Director of, the Institute of Trial and Appellate Practice. As Director, Professor Pritikin has developed a Concentration in Trial and Appellate Advocacy, brought experienced practitioners in to coach the school’s competitive advocacy teams (the TAHB and the Moot Court Honors Board), and brought lawyers, jury consultants, and other experts to campus to speak to students about what litigating is really like. In addition to teaching litigation-related courses such as Competitive Trial Advocacy and his Advanced Litigation Seminar, Professor Pritikin brings his real-world experience to bear in his doctrinal courses such as Evidence, Criminal Law, and even Wills and Trusts.

Jessie Hill is associate director of the Center for Social Justice, and served previously as associate director of the Institute for Global Security Law and Policy. She joined the Case Western faculty in 2003 after practicing First Amendment and civil rights law with the firm of Berkman, Gordon, Murray & Devan in Cleveland. Before entering private practice, she worked at the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York, litigating challenges to state law restrictions on reproductive rights. She also served as law clerk to The Hon. Karen Nelson Moore of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In 2006, Prof. Hill taught a course entitled “Religion and Terrorism” in the Cox Center sponsored Summer Institute for Global Justice in The Netherlands. She has also traveled to Dubai to train Iraqi lawyers in human rights law.

Jessie Hill received a B.A. from Brown (’92) and a JD from the Harvard Law School (’99).

Dave Fagundes is an associate professor at Southwestern Law School where he teaches property, copyright, and trademark.  Before coming to Southwestern, Dave worked as a clerk for Judge David S. Tatel of the D.C. Circuit, an associate at Jenner & Block (Washington, DC office), and a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School.  His academic writing has been published in journals including the Northwestern University Law Review, the Boston College Law Review, and the Minnesota Law Review.

Dave graduated with honors from Harvard College (1996) and Harvard Law School (2001).  He was an articles editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Gregory C. Keating joined the USC Law faculty in 1991 and was promoted to full professor in 1996; he also holds a joint appointment with the USC Department of Philosophy. He teaches torts, legal ethics, and seminars in legal and political philosophy.

Professor Keating graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College, earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in political philosophy from Princeton University, and graduatedmagna cum laude from Harvard Law School. After graduating from Harvard, he practiced law in Massachusetts for five years before joining USC Law. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and at the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Professor Keating is an editor of a leading torts casebook and writes on torts, professional responsibility and legal theory. He has published articles on the morality of reasonable risk imposition and the law of negligence more generally; on the history of and moral justification for strict liability in tort; on why justice requires that we take inefficiently great precaution against significant risks of death and devastating injury; and on issues of professional responsibility, with particular attention to the problems that confront practicing lawyers.

Howard Bromberg teaches in the Legal Practice Program, where he also taught from 1996 to 2000. Prior to returning to Michigan Law, he was Associate Professor of Law and Assistant Dean of Clinical and Professional Skills Programs at the Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor. He has published numerous articles and entries on subjects in law, legal history, and biography, and edited the recently published three-volume Great Lives From History: The Incredibly Wealthy. From 2001 to 2003, he was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, where he helped establish the new First-Year Lawyering Program and served as its Associate Director. From 2008 to 2010, he designed and directed the legal writing program at the newly-created Peking University School of Transnational Law, where he was also a visiting professor.

Professor Bromberg has also taught at Chicago and Stanford Law Schools. Before entering the academy, he practiced law as an assistant district attorney in the Appeals Bureau of the New York County District Attorney’s Office and as legislative counsel to Congressman Thomas Petri of Wisconsin. Professor Bromberg received his B.A and J.D. degrees from Harvard Law School and his J.S.M degree from Stanford Law School. He serves on the advisory committee of the State of Michigan Moot Court Competition, which he chaired from 2005 to 2006 when he directed the annual competition.

Professor Klein has taught at Thurgood Marshall School of Law, in Houston, Texas, as well as Albany Law School, Albany, New York. She has taught in the summer programs of Columbia Law School (Amsterdam) and Southwestern Law School. Before pursuing an academic career, she clerked for the Hon. Lourdes G. Baird, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and worked in Los Angeles and New York law firms.

Professor Klein has published in both legal and philosophy journals, delivered papers and participated in conferences and panel discussions, and had her articles cited in numerous journals and judicial opinions. Her current research includes an analysis of the myriad legal challenges facing transgendered people; plural marriage and property law; the completion of her nationwide survey on tortious interference with expectation of inheritance; and an article in tort theory.

Professor Klein teaches Property and serves as advisor to the University of La Verne Law Review. In recent years, she has also taught Antidiscrimination Law and Wills & Trusts.

Michael Dorff is the Associate Dean for Research and a Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School, where he teaches Contracts, Business Associations, Corporate Mergers & Acquisitions, and Nonprofit Organizations.  He has also taught at UCLA School of Law (Securities Regulation) and at Rutgers Law School, Camden (Contracts, Business Associations, and Securities Regulation).  Dean Dorff’s research focuses primarily on corporate governance (especially executive compensation) and the philosophy of law and economics.

He has published numerous articles in these areas in publications such as the Southern California Law Review, the Journal of Corporation Law, and the Indiana Law Journal.  He has also served as an expert witness on business law issues and has been appointed as a business dispute referee by the Los Angeles Superior Court.  He has lectured widely on his research at law schools throughout the country and internationally.  Dean Dorff graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Levin H. Campbell on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit before going on to private practice at firms in Houston and New York.  He is currently working on a book on executive compensation.

Rachel Arnow-Richman earned her JD, cum laude, from Harvard University and her BA, summa cum laude, in English from Rutgers University. She also holds an LLM from Temple University School of Law, where she was an Abraham L. Freedman Fellow and Lecturer in Law. Prior to joining the College of Law, Prof. Arnow-Richman was an associate professor at the Texas Wesleyan University School of Law and a visiting associate professor at Temple University School of Law.

Before entering law teaching, she served as a judicial clerk to the New Jersey Supreme Court and practiced employment and commercial law at Drinker, Biddle and Reath LLP in Philadelphia. Prof. Arnow-Richman teaches and publishes in the areas of employment law and contracts. She serves on the Executive Committees of the American Association of Law Schools Sections on Labor and Employment Law and Contracts and Commercial Law.

Through her experiences in the courts, private practice, the nonprofit sector, and academia, Professor Hart saw clearly “how powerful and pervasive the law is, touching every aspect of peoples’ lives.” She enjoys sharing this perspective with her students and exploring with them “the possible systemic changes that might be needed in the law.”

After completing her LL.M., Professor Hart accepted a teaching position at her alma mater, the University of Hawaii. In 1999, she moved to California to join the Southwestern faculty. She was named as the Irwin R. Buchalter Professor of Law in 2005.

A former law review member herself, Professor Hart serves as a faculty advisor for the Southwestern Law Review. Her own research has covered a wide range of topics, from procedural reform and the strategic uses of procedure to same-sex marriage. Her current research focuses on commercial law – its politics, distributive effects and social consequences.

Professor Gregory Maggs joined the Law School faculty in 1993. He served as senior associate dean for academic affairs from 2008-2010 and as interim dean from 2010-2011. He teaches mainly in the areas of commercial law, constitutional law, contracts, and counter-terrorism law, and he has written extensively on these subjects. He received the Distinguished Faculty Service Award in 1997, 1998, 2004, 2005, and 2011 by vote of the classes graduating in these years.

Professor Maggs is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Following law school, he was a law clerk for Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and for the late Judge Joseph T. Sneed of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also taught for two years as an assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

Ken Agran is a 1992 summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College and a 1995 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.  He won the Sears Prize at the end of his second year in law school for achieving the top grades in his class, and he served on the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review during his third year.  Upon graduation, Ken opened his own law practice, developing special expertise in appellate litigation and in the award of attorney fees under California’s private attorney general statute.

Ken began his teaching career in 1999 in the Political Science Department at the University of California, Irvine, designing a series of law-related courses for undergraduates.  A few years later, he took his teaching talents to the law school level, first as an adjunct professor at Whittier Law School and Chapman University School of Law, and then as a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Whittier Law School.  Over the years, he designed and taught eight different law school courses, consistently receiving outstanding student evaluations.

In recent months, Ken has taken some time off from classroom teaching to focus on several creative endeavors combining his interests in law, writing, legal education, and entertainment.